You don’t need special materials to make breathtaking, realistic art. At least, you don’t if you’re as talented as French photographer and illustrator Sarah Esteje, who often uses nothing more than a Bic pen to create stunning work. A perusal of her Tumblr — which we highly recommend — yields everything from a precise, hand-drawn recreation of David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane album cover to a photorealistic rendering of raw bacon. But it’s Esteje’s painstakingly detailed Bic portraits of animals, which we spotted via Colossal, that we can’t stop gawking at. Lifelike, shrieking monkeys, solemn hounds, and roaring bears await you after the jump.
If you’ve ever had a staring contest with a squirrel, or been spotted sneaking out of the house by a neighborhood cat, or ever wondered if your dog is secretly judging you, you’ll probably like “Animals That Saw Me,” a photography series by Ed Panar, which we first spotted over at My Modern Met. Panar has been working on the project for over 16 years, sneaking up on unsuspecting critters both in the wild and in the urban jungle and documenting what happens when gets caught by his subjects. The project, which is adorable and hilarious all at once, will be published as a book, Animals That Saw Me: Volume 1, next month. Click through to see some animals seeing you back, and then be sure to check out Panar’s website for even more of his work.
What could you make with torn paper scraps and a bit of water color? If you’re like us, the answer is not much. But fortunately, Annawili Highfield is not like us, which is why she can take the most simple materials and create her own stunning animal animals. While she certainly has a soft spot for birds and horses, to the point where they dominate her body of work, she’s not limited to avian and equestrian creations. Here are some of our favorite pieces from her collection.
Let’s make this perfectly clear. Josh Ellingson is not a fan of cat disfigurement. But every now and then, a slightly “different” cat makes a splash on the net with its inspirational story, and that’s where Ellingson’s portraits come into play. While some people look the other way when seeing a maimed animal, he is able to show the beauty in these out of the ordinary creatures. Read on to see Ellingson’s portraits of two fascinating cats.
Here’s something that we just spotted on MetaFilter that we think all of you Minecraft fans can get behind: Menagerie is a series of “10 polygonal animal paintings” inspired by Canadian artist Laura Bifano’s love of nature and classic video games; each work juxtaposes the soft lines of a lush, natural landscape with animals that are decidedly block-like. Click through to check out a slide show of her paintings, and if you’re interesting in purchasing a print version, visit her shop on Etsy.
At first, it’s hard to put a finger on what makes these animal portraits by Denmark-based photographer Morten Koldby more compelling than similar work that we’ve seen. And then it hits you: Wild as they might be, all of his subjects sit calmly for the camera, their eyes trained directly on its lens. Meeting their gaze — especially at such a close range — can be rather unsettling.”I started out doing these as a weekend project, and it took off from there,” he explains. “The theme in the series is the almost human facial expressions of the animals, some look nervous, some arrogant, attentive, and so on.” Check them out for yourself in our slide show.
Admittedly, we’ve been a little animal photography-obsessed around here lately; we’ve shown you heartbreaking photos of elderly animals and frightening photos of everyday animals. But now for something completely different — more intimate, if you will: Barcelona photographer Oscar Ciutat’s haunting series Caged, which we discovered on A Cup of Jo. “It is said that the eyes are the windows to the soul,” he explains. “I took a series of trips to the local zoo to photograph the eyes of animals held in captivity. I was intrigued by whether the lack of freedom would be apparent in the images.” Click through and let us know in the comments if it changes the way you feel about zoos.
One of our favorite posts here at Flavorpill recently has been Houston artist Isa Leshko’s photographs of elderly animals. As well as being a fantastic achievement in its own right, Leshko’s work also called to mind the work of another artist who we greatly admire: Italian photographer Giacomo Brunelli. If Leshko’s photos capture a sense of quiet, stately dignity, Brunelli’s stark photos of animals at various stages of life (and death) are more visceral and unsettling, capturing the wildness that we often forget still remains in our domestic animals. The creatures in his photos are both familiar and alien, and the images are often startlingly powerful, an implicit reminder that for all that animals can be friendly and beautiful, they are Not Like Us. We’ve collected some of our favorites after the jump. See more at Brunelli’s website.
Come on, people. Haven’t we had enough of puppies and kitties and baby chicks? That’s animal ageism, and here at Flavorpill, we’re taking a stand. Well, okay, not really — we love puppies and kitties and baby chicks. But this series of photographs by Houston based artist Isa Leshko has a little more meaning than your average baby bear video. Leshko explains, “I began the series as a means of exploring my feelings about my mother’s decline due to Alzheimer’s Disease… As I’ve worked on this project, though, I’ve come to realize that these images are a testament to survival and endurance. And they raise questions about what it means to be elderly.” Leshko’s photographs are extremely powerful, at once heartbreaking and still full of life, eliciting our most human responses to old age and suffering in our furry friends. Click through to see some of our favorites from her collection and be sure to check out the rest of Leshko’s work.
Chicago photographer Colleen Plumb’s new exhibition Animals Are Outside Today, which opened at Jen Bekman Gallery in Soho on Friday, is a series of strange and often slightly hyper-real images of animals – everything from circus elephants to the decaying corpse of a raccoon. As a body of work, Animals Are Outside Today explores the complex and often contradictory relationship between humans and animals: as the artist’s statement says, “We love and admire [animals]; we are entertained and fascinated by them; we take our children to watch and learn about them… At the same time, we eat, wear and cage them with seeming indifference, consuming them, and images of them, in countless ways.” Like all the best art, it’s both moving and thought-provoking. Click through to see a gallery of some of Plumb’s work.
