Category: Surreal

Kavan the Kid Interview: Art Saved His Life

American photographer Kavan the Kid has expressed his disquiet emotions in the surrealist imagery that he produces. Fears, anxiety, depression are aspects unfolded in his visuals, and he talks openly about these personal struggles in this interview. He has collaborated with Human Code to create a candle with his artwork, to be sold online and […]

A Stranger in Town: Dark, Symbolic Compositions by Shane Pierce

Shane Pierce is an artist from Missouri (currently based in North Carolina) who describes his life and art as “nomadic”—travelling, working in different creative fields, and populating his oil paintings with skull-faced suitcase-toting wanderers ( “‘a stranger comes to town’ type of theme,” as he describes it in a fascinating interview with Beautiful Bizarre). With […]

Spectral Beasts in the Shadowy Fantasy Realms of Jade Mere

Jade Mere is a writer and illustrator with a passion for fantasy, science fiction, and the paranormal. Humans and animals are her favorite subjects, and this post features a selection of the latter. Just like the moonlit waters of Mere’s Pacific-Northwest home, the animals are filled with phosphorescence, light leaking from their eyes, mouths, and […]

Radical Beauty: Elizaveta Porodina with Lily Moore

Elizaveta Porodina is a Munich-based (Moscow-born) fashion and fine-art photographer. Her work is experimental, bending reality with colour-burst surrealism and black-and-white romanticism. The emotional symbolism underlying her work derives from her studies in clinical psychology. Featured here is her contribution to Radical Beauty, a photo project aimed at challenging beauty normativity in contemporary culture. The […]

Externalized Inner Worlds: Photography by Javier Gallego Escutia

Javier Gallego Escutia is London-based artist working in photography, film, and (more recently) music. His work is conceptual; rather than documenting the outside world, he focuses on externalizing his inner world. Featured here is a selection of his photography, largely from his “Untitled Portraits” series, which involve surreal depictions of the human body. Defying societal […]

Restless Spirits and Worlds Between: The Art of Jenna Andersen

Restlessness and uncertainty characterize the mesmerizing artwork of Jenna Andersen. Faceless figures, engulfed by vegetation native to her home state of Virginia, explore mysterious forests and yards. Ghosts peer statically over these spaces, voyeurs to a strange and untouchable world, watching time pass and reality warp, their feelings and identities hidden behind a sheet. Other […]

Liminality and Bizarre Beauty: Doll Sculptures by Virginie Ropars

Virginie Ropars is an artist from Brittany, France. A degree in graphic arts led her to the video game industry, and afterwards she knew she wanted to make things with her hands. Her magical, feminine characters, made of fabric and polymer clay, hover in the liminal space between doll art, sculpture, and clothing design. While […]

Poisons Museum: Sculptural Critiques by Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov

These spindly sculpted lifeforms are the work of Moscow-based artist Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov. After studying bioengineering and philology in university, he turned to art as a way of expressing his curiosity and concerns around science, knowledge acquisition, and biological processes. “Poisons Museum” is a project dedicated to the problem of global information and “information that can […]

Colorful, Grotesque Creature Mash-Ups by Tom Strom

Tom Strom is an artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland, who paints and tattoos colorful “creature mash-ups.” Among his inspirations are anime and Disney movies—the former for monster design, the latter for colorful backgrounds. He began tattooing over twenty years ago, during which time he experimented with different techniques and developed his style, which is an […]

Darkness and Innocence in the Illustrations of Yuriko Shirou

Yuriko Shirou is a self-taught illustrator based in Mexico. He has worked in many different art styles—including manga, American comics, and figurative art—and has done projects for publishers around the world. His illustrations resemble morbid fairy tales, conflating innocence with darkness. The moth is a recurring symbol, channeling Mesoamerican beliefs surrounding death omens and the […]