Raise an Eyebrow: Who are these Hybrids? Pt.1

I was recently asked a great question on Twitter by @RobertClarkMTFS It was “I have noticed all the animal/human hybrids in your paintings. Is that more of a fun thing or is there a deeper meaning?”

And, of course, the answer is both, and after a few attempts to explain in less than 140 characters, I said I’d have to answer with a blog post. And, here it is!

This series started with a suggestion from my friend, the artist Dottie Locks. Flipping through my collection of scraps and cutout papers and pictures, we were talking about the strangeness of those Anne Geddes type of babies- hyper-real photographs of faerie and animal babies. An inspiration to really push the strangeness resulted in the paintings “Babies are Cute” and “The Baby Was Cute.”

These babies were very well recieved – the gift cards I had printed of them disappeared immediately, and a third, smaller work was commissioned for a birthday present. That’s the kind of reaction I love to get, so I kept the idea of creating strange hybrids in the back of my mind.

These babies are called “Babies are Cute” as a nod to Jenny Holzer’s Truisms. These babies, with the bird claws and a possibly poisonous or hallucinogenic mushroom, are fairly cute. Of course, everyone has a little bit of a monster in them. @Havi has a colouring book and a larger definition here. And those monsters look pretty innocuous, and so we take care of them like loved little creatures, because we created them. But really, they’re no good, and eat things, like other babies. That’s why there’s only a pile of feathers next to the Monster Baby. Hahaha.

So that led to a series of sketches that take it just a little farther. Here’s one of those sketches:

I’ll explain more about them tomorrow. If you want to make sure you don’t miss it, subscribe to the RSS feed.

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