Kelly Denato

Release Me by Kelly Denato

I'm so excited to finally write about Kelly Denato's art!  Her work is soft, delicate, ethereal, even cute, but always with an undercurrent of foreboding, if not downright grotesquerie.  But, I don't just love her art, I also love her art blog.  At No Punch Backs: The Art of Kelly Denato you can learn about how she creates her art.  I love reading about where she draws her inspiration and her thoughts on things like art shows, color-blocking and composition.  Getting to follow along with how her lovely noodle-armed beasties are made makes me appreciate everything she does all the more.  Please, please, be sure to check out both her blog linked above, and her artist's website where you can peruse practically all of her work.  And then throw money at her.

Over the Lake by Kelly Denato

Denato's art is amazing in multiple ways.  Immediately, one can see that it is dream-like, ethereal, and soft.  Her subjects are composed of curved lines, noodle-arms, and flowing sheets of hair.  There's rarely a harsh, jagged shape to be found among these pillow-y landscapes of curved backs, calves, and knees.  The gentle feminine nature of the work is not just in the form, either, but also the lush colorscapes that Denato layers with her acrylics on wood.  Smears of pink, red, grey, and blue amid shifting fields of light and shadow give her work a delicacy, a fragility that plays into the second point of brilliance in her art.

Sweet Nothings by Kelly Denato

There is another facet that is equally as immediate as the sweetness in Denato's art, and that is the horror of it.  From body-horror blisters like those seen in Sweet Nothings to the eldritch unspeakableness of Winter Coat to the straight brutality of I'll Eat You Up, Denato doesn't rest in a bubbly, cartoonish Wonderland.  Her work is more like the ratcheted-up nightmares you'd have after binge-watching Adventure Time and reading some particularly diesel Lemongrab fanfic.

Winter Coat by Kelly Denato

The overall effect of this juxtaposition between soft cuteness and revulsion is the stricken kind of horror of tortured puppies and broken children.  It reminds me of the night my cat Malcolm brought in a dead baby bunny he'd caught and proceeded to devour it in front of me, its tiny stomach still full of curdled mother's milk, leaving only the tip of one velvety ear.  There's something about the gentle, pretty femininity of Denato's work that disarms the viewer in preparation for the darkness of her content.  Made vulnerable in this way, the viewer is then more powerfully disturbed by the sadness and loathing in Denato's creations.

I'll Eat You Up by Kelly Denato

Gold Leaf by Kelly Denato

On a final note: some of Denato's work is just excellently surreal.  The kind of vivid strangeness that makes me pleased with the history of art.  It makes Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase go down easier knowing it left a legacy where Denato can make something as lovely as Wolf Life Me.

Wolf Like Me by Kelly Denato

Hopefully, I've given you a taste for Denato's incredible paintings.  Please do check out her sites linked near the top of the article.  Sweet Dreams!

She's So Phi Above Me by Kelly Denato

-Joanna

Vania Zouravliov

(As always, you may click the photos to view them at a larger size.  I highly recommend doing so for this artist review.)

By the age of thirteen, Vania Zouravliov had gained international acclaim as an illustrator.  His work was exhibited in Canterbury and Paris.  Championed in his homeland, Russia, he was introduced to famous musicians and artists.  Old communist social realists told him his work was of the Devil.  Upon seeing Zouravliov's work, one can see why.

His vividly detailed and masterful works mingle the innocent fragility of youth with macabre brutality and eroticism.  Pale waifs cavort with devils, specters, zombies, or lascivious foxes.  Drawing inspiration from Russian romantic folklore, Japanese illustrations, vampy silent film stills, and Disney, Zouravliov has created an astounding body of work.  My favorite pieces remind me of a lush edition of Victorian fairy tales, with each illustration bringing the dark, sexual undertones of the stories into nightmarish definition.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  Much of Zouravliov's work does fall into the category of Erotica.  As such, I've made this blog post as SafeForWork as I can, but if you go looking for more, you will quickly be in NSFW-land.  There are lots of nipples.  LOTS.  And plenty of full female nudity.  Fair warning.

Even when his drawings are diffuse, almost seeming to dissolve into a dreamy netherworld, they are rendered with gorgeous texture and reality.  This complexity gives his otherwise fantastical subjects a realism that makes them even more compelling.  Portraits may indicate brutal violence, but are softened through enigmatic expressions and shading.  Tension swings back and forth between the photographic realism of the pieces and their uncanny eeriness.

Fortunately, Zouravliov has found success with the creative agency Big Active, who has helped promote his work and provided him with access to commercial opportunities.  It's always good to hear that an artist is making a living.  To learn more about Vania Zouravliov's work, check out the following link:  http://www.bigactive.com/artists/vania-zouravliov/

P.S. He also has produced some SWEET Game of Thrones art.  It's almost enough to make me care about Bran...

-Joanna

Stranger Visions

Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg wins my award of the year for simultaneously being a classy, poised, creative genius and a weird, invasive, street creeper.  You see, D-H has found a way to create realistic 3D renderings of people all around the state of New York by simply gathering cigarette butts and chewed gum off the streets and sidewalks.

How, you might ask?  Or better yet, WHY?  Well, let's go back to the beginning.

D-H's creepy foray into scavenging for discarded items began in a public bathroom in Penn Station where she collected hairs from the sink of a bathroom. [Gagging already.] Her collection expanded shortly thereafter to fingernails, cigg butts, and best of all, already chewed and spit out bubble gum.  D-H is a PhD student studying electronic arts at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute.  She is able to extract DNA from the items she collects and sequences their genomic regions into a computer program, creating a model of the person who the discarded item once belonged to.  But D-H takes it one step further.  Instead of just being creepy on her computer in her own time, she creates actual sculptures of these people's faces using a 3D printer.

And thus was born "Stranger Visions."  Each creepy floating head is hung on a gallery wall, often accompanied with a wooden box holding the original sample that was collected and a photograph of the street or alley in which it was discovered.  If you are truly interested in the specific scientific process that D-H uses to analyze the DNA, I will link below an article from SmithsonianMag.com which has a few paragraphs detailing it.  If you're like me, however, you want to see the creepy pictures.  So, let's get to it.

 

 

D-H has even created a DNA derived self-portrait.  Judge for yourself its accuracy.  I think it's not too shabby.  D-H is quoted as saying, "It came from this place of noticing that we are leaving genetic material everywhere.  That, combined with the increasing accessibility to molecular biology and these techniques means that this kind of science fiction future is here now.  It is available to us today.  The question really is what are we going to do with that?"

The overarching problem I have with this is, um, this whole concept of, you know, CONSENT.  I mean, really, I am guilty of launching a piece of chewed gum in the air to see how far it can go.  I'm damn sure every smoker doesn't religiously deposit his/her butt into the designated ashtray.  And if every time your fingernail breaks off, you run to the nearest trashcan to properly dispose of it rather than letting it fall to the earth, I am going to sit here and silently judge you.  That being said, the gift D-H leaves with us all is now we have to be super paranoid that someone out there is collecting these items and, for all we know, a 3D model of our head could be plastered on the wall of an art gallery somewhere.  WTF.  Could you imagine if you happened to be in New York and wanted to check out some cool new art shows and, BOOM, there's your face looking back at you, soulless, unblinking, staring.  I mean, really, I'm sure there would be a way for her to identify these people based on their DNA to go ask their permission and this could even have a great forensic link for solving criminal cases if she were to hone her craft, but D-H isn't in this for the science.  She's in it for the art which makes her both cool as hell but so...so...sketchy. (Disregard the terrible art pun.)

-Amanda

Reference Article #1

The Art of Edvard Munch

This is Edvard Munch.

This is the painting you all have seen and know him best for.

 

HOWEVER, there are so many more paintings by Munch that are creepy, intriguing, unsettling, beautiful, sad, and downright chilling.  Munch was born in December of 1863 in Norway.  His mother died of tuberculosis when he was only five years old.  Edvard was often sick and kept out of school for much of the winters, during which he developed his drawing skills to keep himself occupied.  His father was obsessively religious to the point of psychoneurosis and often sternly reprimanded his children saying their mother was watching them from heaven and grieving over their misbehavior.  Munch's persistent illness combined with his father's temper helped inspire many of his nightmarish and melancholy paintings.  He felt that death was constantly advancing on him.

Later in life, Munch left college to become a painter, much to the chagrin of his father.  He experimented with naturalism and impressionism but didn't feel a true connection with these art styles.  Munch began a period of reflection and self-examination and recorded his thoughts in his "soul's diary."  His most famous work The Scream, first painted in 1893, exists in four versions, two pastels and two paintings.  The Scream has been widely interpreted as representing the anxiety of modern man.  Here is Munch's description of how The Scream originated: "I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature."  So...that's creepy.

Inheritance (1897-1899)
Munch witnessed an event in Paris that led to the creation of this painting.  A mother in a hospital waiting room held her dying child on her lap as she cried.  The child had contracted syphilis and is depicted with an abnormal-sized head, gaunt limbs, and rashes.  The falling leaves on the mother's skirt represent death.  This picture provoked much backlash in Munch's day.  Sexuality and venereal diseases were seen as taboo subjects and many felt Munch had crossed the line with his depiction of a harsh reality in this painting.

Self Portrait in Hell (1903)
Munch's peculiar self-portrait depicts himself naked in the garden of his summer home.  This unnerving painting indicates how troubled Munch was and how he perceived his position as a man and an artist, figuratively in hell.  The large black mass to the left forms a threatening shadow believed to be either the grave or a giant black wing.  However, Munch has not painted himself succumbing to his demons.  He poses strongly, confidently, as though he is the dark ruler of his own private hell.

Death of Marat (1907)
Based off of the painting by Jacques-Louis David of the murdered French revolutionary leader, Jean-Paul Marat.  Munch's style is erratic, agitated, and heavy.  This was said to reflect his disturbed mental state at the time, as this was painted shortly before his mental breakdown and resulting therapeutic treatment.  Munch stated with this painting, he had an urge to "break the areas and lines."

Workers On Their Way Home (1913-1915)
"Under a cloudy, winter evening sky, a gaunt column of workers, an unstoppable human tide, flows ‘through the cold blue shadows’ of a sunless, treeless, Nordic street. The central figures challenge us with their dark, hollowed-out eyes, their upright posture and clenched fists conveying a sense of determination, solidarity and defiance. They sport beards, soft hats and blue jackets with brown trousers and dark vests. One has a distinctive white face—from dust or disease?"


Shown below are more works from Munch I find to be particularly unnerving and sad, though beautifully executed.

Golgotha (1900)

Jealousy (1895)

Agony (1895)

Throughout the course of his career and life, Munch suffered from crippling anxiety coupled with excessive drinking and brawling.  Munch entered therapy in 1908 and was treated with "electrification."  Interestingly, in the 1930s and 1940s, Nazis labeled Munch's art as "degenerate art" and removed 82 of his pieces from German museums.  Munch died at the age of 80 in his home near Oslo but not without having left his mark on the world in both pop culture and to us creepy aficionados who always like to dig a little deeper.


-Amanda


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Shain Erin - Artist Review*

Sorceress - Female Nude

*and genuine mystery... but I'll get to that later.

Shain Erin's Morbid Art dolls.  Where do I even begin on how amazing these are?

Since graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute with a BFA, Erin has used his sculpture skills to create terrifying figures that have been displayed in art shows around the world.  His collections have ranged from pale ghosts reminiscent of Victorian poppets, to small withered mummies swaddled tightly in their fetishistic bindings.  Erin boldly delves into grotequerie and monster-making, pushing the boundaries of what a "doll" is and can be.

In the bio from Erin's wordpress site, he states that these toys are not meant to be comforting.  Rather, they are "disturbing and enchanting, irrational and frightening, beautiful and sad."  And discomforting they are.  Some of the dolls are immediately spooky: the kind of thing a 13-year-old lingering outside a Hot Topic would enjoy.  Very quickly, though, his work veers into the horror of severe disfigurement and mutation.  Mouths gape with a snarl of huge, malformed teeth.  Extra eyes, uncomfortable goiters, unreasonable cleft palates, and swollen skulls grace these figures delicately sculpted in paperclay.  Eventually, the dolls, like those in the Fallen series, are reduced to vaguely humanoid lumps of scabrous flesh.

Christina

But, Erin is not in the business of making mere scary dolls.  His work is deeply rooted in world art and mythology.  As such, his works often aim to excavate and explore a personal mythology, creating "artifacts that never were."  In this vein, we see his series of mummies, reminiscent of real-life tiny  mummies or shrunken heads.  Instead of being dressed in child-like nightgowns, these mummies are given crude shifts and bead necklaces- or are tightly bound like a witch-doctor's doll.

When not riffing on the traditions of Western or international art, Erin subverts the human form to make monsters.  Some are genuinely bizarre like the Whispering Roots Woman, while others seem carefully constructed to inspire the most fear.  They'd fit right in to a Guillermo del Toro movie.  Erin will swap out heads for animal parts, tinker with misplaced anatomy, and distort the proportions of his dolls until they are perfect.

The Seer - Journeys of the Soul

The best place to view Erin's work outside of a Google image search is his deviantart gallery.  His blogs (on blogspot and wordpress), are still up as of this article's publication, but don't display as much of his work.  However, this does bring us nicely to the Mystery of Shain Erin!

If you thought you liked this guy because of his talent, craftsmanship, and twisted imagination, I've got one more course of dessert to put in front of you.

Shain Erin has completely disappeared.

As I dug into this artist, to gather information about how they produce their work, their background, and what themes they intend to play with, I found dead end after dead end.  Erin used to have an Etsy storefront where he sold his dolls.  It's not longer in service.  The domain name that he links to from his blogs as his official website (www.shainerin.com) is up for sale.  His still-standing blogs haven't been updated for four and a half years.  His facebook page hasn't shown any activity since October 1, 2011.  In fact, the facebook upload of a photo seems to be his last known communication with the rest of the world.

There's even a sad trail of recent messages on Erin's deviantart page asking where he's gone and hoping that he's okay.  Aside from the two blogs and the deviantart account, Shane Erin isn't on the internet anymore.  Despite the continued attention that his work receives, Erin hasn't come out of the woodwork to display more dolls at art shows, or sell any of his creations.

I'm not sure the question will ever be answered, but it must be asked: What happened to Shane Erin?

-Joanna

Travis Louie - Artist Review

Herman and Morris

Atmosphere and strangeness; Travis Louie displays a mastery of both in his paintings.  Rendered in acrylic over graphite, Louie's work depicts an alternate world of Victorian society littered with dreamlike touches.  Odd creatures and persons not quite human have their portraits taken.  There is a mundanity to the practice, but the subjects of the paintings are anything but mundane.

On one hand, you have the familiar.  Stern tintypes of relatives with slicked-over hairstyles and curly mustaches are things we might find in any of our family attics.  The formality of the portrait served a few purposes back in the day.  Not mere records of appearance, they were also a display of status and place in the society.  One's dress, one's posture, and the style of one's brooch are all details that indicated the larger world surrounding the subject.  One could argue that the rigid structure dictated by the technology of the time gave definition to these minute differences between a baker and a broker.

Leveraging this attention to detail, and how it can lead to the weaving of insinuated worlds, Travis Louie's portraits of imaginary persons are each deeply fascinating.  Once you get past the upfront strangeness of troll-like appearances or giant toads, you may be struck by the familiarity of the work.  They way the subjects sit and look off camera is comforting.  And then, again, upon examining the details that indicate that larger world, that strangeness comes creeping back.  For example, look into the unnatural gleam in the eyes of the man in Herman and Morris above.

Candletop Hastings

On the other hand, Louie is great because of the up-front weirdness of his work.  I mean, really, to somebody who has spent far, far too much time wallowing in descriptions of Edwardian fish-people or fantastical steampunk half-breeds, Travis Louie is like an uncomfortable dream come true.  There's monster-people, monkey-people, people holding giant goldfish, people with odd little creatures floating above their heads.

While Louie's style is undoubtably his own, I can't help but point out a few other ways to describe his style that might appeal.  His work is like looking at the great-grandparents of Toni DiTerlizzi's faeries, rendered in film noir shading.  Louie's portraits are like peeking into the fantasy world of a book not-yet-written, but that I desperately want to read.  The influence of his childhood days spent watching atomic-age sci-fi thrillers is evident in his mutants and independently-minded hairdos.

I wish I could show you everything Louie has done.  Picking examples for this post was immensely difficult, so I'll just direct you to his website: http://travislouieartworks.com/  Also, a google image search under his name will produce further wonders.  Oh, and what wonders they be.

-Joanna

P.S. Sorry this is late, my laptop blew up.  Grrrrr. :(

Art by Laurie Lipton

The above video isn't actually creepy but it gives you an insight into the personality of the quirky and badass Laurie Lipton and you get to see her work on one of her signature giant intricate art pieces.

To give you a little background on Lipton before we delve into her fascinating art pieces, she was born in New York and began drawing when she was four years old.  Lipton has lived in numerous countries including Germany, France, and the UK, to name a few.  While traveling in Europe as a student, Lipton truly honed her style and technique, "building up tone with thousands of fine cross-hatching lines like an egg tempera painting."  Lipton rooted her art in the stylings of Van Eyck, Goya, and Rembrant, even after her teachers told her that figurative art went out in the Middle Ages and that she should express herself using more forms and shapes.

Lipton truly found her soul in black and white art.  Lipton is quoted as saying, "Black and white is the color of ancient photographs and old TV shows.  It is the color of ghosts, longing, time passing, memory, and madness.  Black and white ached.  I realized that it was perfect for the imagery in my work.”  And wow, it truly is some amazing and creepy imagery.  Check out some of my favorite pieces below.

The social commentary is evident in Lipton's work, whether it be the perils of fame, the frailty of age,  the sorrow of mass media consumption, or the distortion of celebrity.  In an interview with beinArt, Lipton is quoted as saying:

"JW: So much of your work is social commentary, on topics varying from overconsumption of materials and media to politics. Yet I’m not sure I can come up with any examples of your work that are squarely on the positive end of the spectrum: what we’re doing right as opposed to what we’re doing wrong. Is this a deliberate choice, and if not, what do you suppose accounts for this?

LL: I only draw about the things that concern me. When I was a child I used to sit alone for hours and draw about all the aspects of school that I hated, all the wrongs I felt, all the anger and frustration that was bottled up inside of me. It helped me to cope and to understand. Unsettling art, whether it is in books, music, or pictures, is an attempt to comprehend life’s trials and tribulations. Pretty, nice, nonconfrontational, “positive” art serves a purpose, too… but I don’t connect to it on any deep level and I don’t wish to waste my time doing it."

Did I mention she's a badass?

If I were to link every piece of Lipton's that is astounding, intricate, thought-provoking, creepy, and disturbing, this post would scroll for days.  Please check out the rest of her work at www.laurielipton.com  It is breathtaking.


PLUS -

DUDE!  You can buy this on a t-shirt!  The only catch is it's $64.00.  I can hear my wallet screaming like the baby whose head is about to be eaten.

- Amanda


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Benny Kusnoto - Artist Review

Snail Jester by BennyKusnoto

Vivid and translucent, BennyKusnoto's art is vibrant enough to be alive.  Which is particularly disturbing once you see some of the horrifying configurations of his monsters.

On his Deviantart page (linked near the bottom), you'll find insane, grotesque mishmashes of human parts that juxtapose beautiful ladies' legs, raw red maws, and fiendish insectoid hooks.  These monsters are so detailed and the light so delicately rendered as it falls over them that they are elevated from being merely scary, to being real.  This is what sets BennyKusnoto apart from your typical tentacled-horror scrawler.  His work doesn't rely on blood and guts to get a point across.  Rather, it leverages the texture of pallid flesh, the glistening of mucous.

However, this is just his latest work.  As you explore the page, you'll see that the artist is quite varied and that his style can shift dramatically.  There is definite quality in the earliest submissions to deviantart, that include a lot of really badass Batman fan art.  Later, there's a series of artfully smudged black and white pieces that remind me of Stephen Gammell's nightmare-inducing illustrations for "Scary Stories to Read in the Dark".   Then, there are moody, dramatic portraits of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster and the Mummy.  As you scroll on, you'll pass glossy background textures, and a steampunk beagle.  A STEAMPUNK BEAGLE.

My personal favorites are his horror creatures, though.  I'm glad that the artist seems to find the Joker inspiring because it brought about some of the most amazing scary-clown art I've ever seen.  And I'm not talking Killer Clowns with Big Teeth, I'm talking this:

Tears of a Clown by BennyKusnoto

Those tiny eyes....  (shudder).

Finally, some of the monsters are a bit more conventionally built, but extremely well-designed.  They capture something otherworldly, but in their execution are deeply plausible. There are squid-bats that look like David Attenborough should be narrating them, and aliens that might well skitter under distant foliage, if not the hull of one's spaceship.

Creatura by BennyKusnoto

This sense of reality is, in my opinion, what makes horror art really compelling.  The ability to create an image that suggests a fully-realized, if sinister, world is a talent not many possess.   BennyKusnoto, with his wrinkles and glimmers, creates such worlds.

If you're looking for some extremely high-quality horror illustrations, or just want to check out a super-cool looking redesign of Darth Vader, I will gladly point you to the link below.  

Check out more of his awesome artwork here: http://bennykusnoto.deviantart.com/gallery/

-Joanna

John Kenn Mortensen - Artist Review

The bio on his website reads:

Born in Denmark 1978, I write and directed television shows for kids.  I have a set of twins and not much time for anything.  But when I have time, I draw monster drawings on Post-it Notes... It is a little window into a different world, made on office supplies.

That's right, Post-It Notes.  I first saw the artist's work a couple years ago, promoted along the lines of "You Won't Believe What This Amazing Artist Draws on Post-Its!!!!!"  Luckily, the link had an image with it, so I got a glimpse of an eye of a Kenn-brand monster.  It was big and fuzzy, and its gaping, toothy mouth and pale, sightless eyes struck the perfect chord of endearing, mysterious, and deeply creepy.

The artist's use of ink on paper allows him to be extremely detailed.  Thus many of his monsters sport shaggy pelts, tattered robes, or oozing, melted skin.  This along with hyper-detailed backdrops of trees, fences. or bedroom walls makes the spaces left vacant pop.  For example, the white eyes of his creatures, ringed heavily with black.

A thing I love about these drawings is their atmosphere.  If there's an heir to the Edward Gorey throne, I can think of no better fit than John Kenn Mortensen.  His pictures do encapsulate little worlds.  Worlds that ring with the strangeness of childhood daydreams and imaginary friends.  Worlds where the Wild Things Are.  Worlds that house the creepy-crawlies kids innocently doodle, only to have their parent discretely crumple up the drawing as chills run down their spine.  Monsters are lit against the night with glowing eyes, or slither from shaded closets.  Sometimes the atmosphere is wrought with irised-in shading, other times it is in how lonely the monsters look.

However, it's not always about the monsters.  There's a balance in each piece between the featured humans, usually children, and the beasts.  It takes these hallucinatory creatures and tethers them to a sort of feverish reality.  What does your child see behind them when they look in the mirror?  Oh, just the usual...

Further, there's a deeply Victorian part of me that loves miniatures.  The fact that this work is done on Post-Its isn't kitschy; it feels like a 21st Century update to locket-bound portraits.

The only thing that makes me sad about John Kenn Mortensen is that sometimes it feels as though his fame is leveraged more on the Post-It Note gimmick than on the sheer mind-blowing quality of his work.  I wonder whether he would have achieved viral-level exposure of his work if it were pencil on vellum.  I wonder how many other Mortensens are out there making mind-blowing monsters I'm not looking at, just because they haven't figured out or bought into the right gimmick.

But, at least this artist is doing well.  Check out his website, or buy his books "Sticky Monsters" and "More Sticky Monsters".  I know what I'm putting on my Amazon wishlist for next Christmas.

http://johnkenn.blogspot.com/

-Joanna