Samantha Mash, Portland, Oregon

digital illustration
2013

About the artist after the jump…

Featured in the Future issue, #35.

While Samantha works digitally, she describes her work as being heavily influenced by Neoclassical painters, American gothic horror writing, and modern Japanese animation. This piece is from a series exploring the Kübler-Ross model (commonly referred to as the five stages of grief), and her personal journey coming to terms with her own way of processing emotions.

“I use my work to explore the thin boundary between what is eerie and what is considered beautiful, looking into the conventions of our cultural perception. My personal work is focused around the themes of death, nature, levels of power, and seclusion. I am ever influenced by science and myth and want to continue to push these themes in my work.”

For more of Mash’s work, visit her website and her blog. She showed a related body of work, including this piece, at Portland’s Pony Club Gallery in February 2014.