I recently came across Helen Musselwhite’s beautiful paper sculptures. Inspired by nature, her stunningly intricate layered designs draw you into a fairytale world of forests, flowers and hedgerows. Her framed pieces make beautiful wall art, but it’s her haunting sculptures in glass domes that really stick in my mind.
I’m a big fan of illustrators that really put a lot of time and detail into their craft, and UK based illustrator, Jamie Mitchell, does just this. His well dressed animals certainly bring a smile to ones face at first glance, but I also like to think he’s attempting to bridge gaps between humans and the natural world that we inhabit.
Sander Steins is a self taught artist from Nijmegen in the Netherlands. He’s extremely versatile: a true creative soul that finds inspiration anywhere and in all kinds of art types. I particularly like his recent mixed media collage series. I want to buy and re-decorate my living room with them!
A visual depiction of her own life, photographer Kayla Bauer, combines subjects of a lower economical class and a way of life. Bauer’s exploration of both the personal and public aspects of a lower economical life in her series entitled A Personal Document of Modest Life is done beautifully.
Do you follow the herd? Whether we like it or not, we are all ‘sheeple’. My new large-scale photographic series Sheep Nation includes 23 intimate and introspective portraits of sheeple. Behind every mask lies a personal truth: an innocence, a sense of individualism, a longing to be seen and heard. The 6 mises en scène depict people unable to think for themselves, allowing the influences of different forms of media to undermine their own identity and wander mindlessly in herds, like sheep.
When I first stumbled upon these images of Daphne Wright’s works, I was in awe of how simple yet haunting they are. Born in Ireland, she is known for her life-size sculptures of animals in their lifeless state. As macabre as the idea might initially seem, the metaphorical meaning may be endless to those who view it. Her works define that sense that there can be beauty in death.
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