BEAUTY: Digital Art--Andrea Zanatelli

Artist Andrea Zanatelli has worked with  Florence Welch and Courtney Love on some amazing projects, and his Embroidery Series captures all the Edwardian, Gothic Revival, Pre-Raphaelite, and Victorian sense of his work. These are not actual embroidered pieces but digital composites of individual images of fabrics and embroidered and beaded objects. Stunning...

Top to bottom: The Blue Iris; Carnations; The Cobweb; Heartsease or The Circle of Protection; Ode To Spring; Our Tears; The Rose Bloom; Three Lilies; Andrea Zanatelli portrait by Alessandro Oliva for "The Greatest Magazine"

https://www.andreazanatelli.com/

BEAUTY: Painting--Travis Louie

Brooklyn artist Travis Louie created a new set of paintings and drawings for a recent Seattle gallery show called "The Present Past." His usual anthropomorphic creatures featured in the show but this time all the subjects were actually endangered species. The gallery, Creatura House, stated, "These works depict endangered animals in Louie’s trademark Victorian daguerreotype painting style. Unlike previous works, the eyes are in color for all these creature’s illuminating that these species are still alive and need support and protection."

http://www.travislouieart.com/

Victorian Ghost Photography

In the mid-1800s, Spirit Photography became the rage. Mediums and Spiritists employed a method of double exposing negatives (a process unknown to the public since photography was still a rather new medium) in order to convince people that they were being contacted and visited by the spirits of loved ones. It is easy to see that many people believed in this (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a huge believer) but it's also easy to see that some indulged in this practice with their tongue in their cheek. And some photos, as you can see, were absolutely staged, no doubt as a kind of "business card" for the medium and photographer.

BEAUTY: Holiday Illustration--Edward Gorey

Over his lifetime, legendary illustrator Edward Gorey (previously here) created some delightfully dark images for the holidays...

BEAUTY: Illustration--Matthew Sharack

Talented artist/illustrator/doodler-sketcher Matthew Sharack creates these wonderful, off-kilter images of spindly Victorian buildings.


His daily bog has a lot more of his charming art:
http://sharackula.blogspot.com/

In a way, his work reminds me of the legendary Edward Gorey, but the first place my mind went was the marvelous, whimsical Christmas film by Wendy Toye entitled "On The Twelfth Day." I remember seeing this film in school when I was a little boy, and there is something about Matthew Sharack's shapes, and especially the colors, that make this retro connection for me.

BEAUTY: Art--Kelly Louise Judd

Kelly Louise Judd shows her dark, Victorian-inspired artowrk on a website obliquely yet fittingly titled "Swan Bones Theater." Her paintings bring to mind visions of the Brothers Grimm, Tim Burton's "Sleepy Hollow" and the Black Forest-filled Brothers Quay film "Institute Benjamenta." Judd also works in soft sculpture to bring her gently ominous visions to life; her enchanting anthropomorphic figures are clothed in voluminous Victorian dresses, just like the subjects in her paintings.

Top to bottom: Lead Us, Lantern; Forest Sleep; Why The Willow Weeps; Perched; The Mockingbird and the Hare; Edwardine, two views; Wilhelmine, two views; Odila 

http://swanbones.com/main.html