As we head into sweater weather, outdoor hikes, picnics, and stargazing become less frequent, swapped for cozy nights inside by the hearth (or radiator, depending on your situation). Luckily, there’s a new three-artist exhibition at Corey Helford Gallery that promises to whet your appetite for all things outdoors.
On view through Nov. 11, 2023, Bound by Nature features new work from Canadian author and illustrator Dena Seiferling, Portland hyperrealist painter Lisa Ericson, and Sydney-based painter Yulia Pustoshkina.
Acclaimed illustrator and picture book author Dena Seiferling debuts Small Creatures Big Feelings, a needle-felted series of bears, bats, and spiders. “This collection consists of a variety of imagery/sculpture work brought to life through self-reflection and an effort to use subject matter that inspires a bright side to dark emotions,” says Dana. “The narratives are about finding ways to be hopeful and holding onto purpose in a climate of uncertainty. I wanted to highlight the empowerment in acknowledging parts of ourselves or experiences that we are a little afraid of through the animals I chose to feature.”
In her new series Doom & Bloom, illustrator and designer Lisa Ericson blends a hyperrealist painting style with her vivid imagination, resulting in fantastical plant and animal paintings. “The subjects in these pieces are survivors rising from the smallest of habitable spaces…or the last of their kind, barely holding on…again in the darkness,” she says. “Exploring themes of deforestation, dwindling habitats, and the ravages of climate change on the natural world, all of these pieces live in the tension between darkness and light, hope and despair, doom and bloom.”
Influenced by her Russian background, Yulia Pustoshkina creates detailed work reminiscent of folkloric miniatures. Her latest series, Meowzers, features a family of feline characters with anthropomorphic characteristics. Inspired by her travels to Japan and Egypt, two cat-loving countries, Meowzers encourages our acceptance of all living creatures, great and small.
Bound by Nature runs through Nov. 11, 2023, at Corey Helford Gallery in downtown Los Angeles. The exhibition runs alongside Kazuki Takamatsu’s Parallelization Era and German artist duo coarse’s Because I Wanted You To Know in the Main Gallery.
“The narratives are about finding ways to be hopeful and holding onto purpose in a climate of uncertainty.” — Dena Seiferling
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All photos published with permission of the artist(s).
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