North of Madness

for those who crave something to devour

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color field paintings by Fraser Radford

acrylic on canvas

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“A collection of various objects I’ve crystallized over the past year showcasing a breadth of different chemicals and compounds I’ve been studying and experimenting with and highlighting their unique molecular structures.”

Tyler Thrasher is a U.S. based artist who creates delicate crystalline structures on dead insects, animal skulls shells, plants and more by using different chemical processes.

website // tumblr // instagram // shop 

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Your Corpse Is Beautiful by Mia-Jane Harris

Close up photographs of medical specimens of human cadavers. Harris describes her work as “breaking the cycle of death with an artistic resurrection.”

From an excerpted interview with Harris from Longevity Letter:

Anca: What was your first encounter with art and what made you choose it?

Mia-Jane: The idea of mortality means a lot to me and has always fascinated me due to my death during birth, and my fear of when it will take me next. A lot of things went wrong during my birth and I was born deceased and left with Erbs Palsy (the partial paralysis and stunted growth of my right arm), so I have always had a fascination with the morbid and abnormal. This fear of disappearing through death is what sparked my artwork. I always felt I needed to create and express, and after music failed due to my erbs palsy making instruments too difficult I instead fell into the fine arts. My work is about helping me overcome my fear by accepting death as a thing of beauty and using preservation to show myself that if I can stop decay then I can have some sort of control over death. Being an artist and leaving these drawings, photographs and sculptures behind is my way of living on and never disappearing after I die.

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Window seat paintings by Jim Darling

Darling started recording the landscapes he saw with photographs and on Instagram, recreating them later as paintings using layered woodwork, acrylic and aerosol. “Everyone is fascinated by flight, and for now aeroplanes are how we get to experience it. At some point on each flight I’ve been on, I think about sitting in a chair in the sky, and it seems crazy every time.”  // The Guardian

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paintings by Agnes Cecile, 25 year old Italian painter using watercolor, charcoal, acrylic and pen

facebook // deviantart // website

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Pre-995 logos for brands that didn’t exist before 1995

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Yo

hey

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Stones & Bones by DZO Olivier, French artist and designer 

ink on organic materials

“I always varied pens but rarely drawing surfaces. Out of paper for a short time, I turned to the two inert materials: stone and bone... Hand fits. The fingers feel every bumps. The spirit leaves guided by reliefs. The tip of the pen folds and unfolds. I even had the feeling that this matter thank me for taking care of. Today, I look differently. I understand them differently.”

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The Girl and Her Dog by Jeong Woo Jae, oil on canvas

The Girl and Her Dog is the artist's exploration of the bond between human and animal. He develops each background based off of realistic, yet nondescript, locations, in order to keep the focus on the young girl and her giant dog. As the pair experience everyday moments sitting in the grass or riding on a bus, they seem to provide each other with emotional support that fulfills an innate desire for companionship. (source)

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Psychedelic Oil Paintings of New York City by Alexandra Pacula 

Artist Alexandra Pacula’s artistry investigates the seduction and glamour of the city lights through speed, vibrancy and psychedelic element in her oil paintings. Featuring some of New York City’s most famous icons, such as Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge, the yellow cab, and the Empire State Building, Pacula successfully paints what resembles a blurry, high-exposure photograph.

The urgency of the city lights become a fleeting moment and confused sensation, which is enticing and elusive. Overall Pacula’s pieces capture the essence and ambiance of New York City, while maintaining a romantic sensibility without detracting from its urban charm. 

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Sunlight through a tree during an eclipse

"Solar images formed by pinholes, crossed fingers, patches between leaves, all occur because of diffraction--a wave property of light. In the case of a pinhole, the light rays do not shoot straight by the rim of the hole, but bend around the edge. This wave effect creates a diffraction pattern of rings on the screen which resembles a bull's eye. That's for a flat wave single light source. If the aperture is illuminated by a scene, it acts as a lens to image the scene on a screen. With the right size hole relative to the right distance to a screen, a clear image is formed. That's the general principle of a pinhole camera." "Applying this to an eclipse observation, the sun becomes the object to view. Point the pinhole camera at the sun and you see a solar image (projected on a screen) dim enough your eyes can enjoy." "But the pinhole effect doesn't need a designed aperture. The solar image can be formed by any aperture if the shadow is the right distance away. The sunrays though tree leaves work to make a solar image on the ground below. Blinds on the window will covert a square opening into a round sun on the wall." "The marvel is that diffraction doesn't need a round hole to form an image. A square pinhole will also work if its area is the same. Even for a random edged shape, the wave bending will average out to form an image of the scene contained in the incident light. That's why the spots of light through the trees are round; the gaps in the foliage are imaging the sun. " NASA on solar eclipse shadows

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Sculptures by Kate Clark 

Kate Clark is a New York-based sculptor. Her work synthesizes human faces with the bodies of animals. These sculptures study the tension between personal and mythical realms, and draw a fine line between the characteristics of animals and humans. Kate's preferred medium is actual animal hide. Mary Logan Barmeyer says Clark's work is "meant to make you think twice about what it means to be human, and furthermore, what it means to be animal." Clark uses what others would throw away and no animals are killed for her work.

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mixed media illustrations by Erik Jones

Erik's work is vibrant and colorful, expressing a heightened sense of realism captured in his female subjects, juxtaposed with sporadic mark making and non-representational forms that could be said to mimic geometric high-end fashion. This effect is achieved by using multiple mediums such as watercolor, colored pencil, acrylic, water-soluble wax pastel and water-soluble oil on paper.

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Illustrations by Jeff Simpson // tumblr

Jeff Simpson is an illustrator and concept artist based in Montreal 

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Sculptures by Hedi Xandt

“...The skull is a very powerful symbol. It’s being used around the world as the sign for death, poisonness or evil. At the same time, the skull guards your mind throughout your whole life, making sure you are safe in dangerous moments. I like this contradiction. It’s our second face beneath all skin and flesh. Isn’t that mesmerizing? Sometimes I look into the mirror and try to figure out how my skull might look like, and if and how it will someday be visible. “

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Nasir ol Molk Mosque in Shiraz, Iran

The mosque was built during the Qajar era, and is still in use under protection by Endowment Foundation of Nasir ol Molk. It was built from 1876 to 1888, by the order of Mirzā Hasan Ali (Nasir ol Molk), a Qajar ruler. The designers were Mohammad Hasan e Memār and Mohammad Rezā Kāshi-Sāz e Širāzi. The mosque includes extensive colored glass in its facade, and displays other traditional elements such as the Panj Kāse ("five concaved") design. It is named in popular culture as the Pink Mosque, due to the usage of considerable pink color tiles for its interior design.

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Digital illustration by Kate Redesiuk

1. Mothling- “It's been a long while since I've painted something that cutesy. The design [is] loosely based on the polyphemus moth and a barn owl. At first I planned to keep this little fellow and maybe create a short comic for it, but alas the lack of time strikes again... So I decided that maybe someone would like to get it for themselves."

2. Fluttery Feeling- “I've always been terrified by the English expression "butterflies in stomach". As cute and pleasant the feeling is supposed to be, all I could ever imagine were giant insects living inside of people's digestive systems and spreading across the population through awkward teenage kisses.”

3. Popcorn-  “I've always found popcorn creepy. There's something very unsettling in the view of the corn expanding from the kernel and puffing up when heated.”