I’m not so much into Chet Zar’s comic-book and noir-inspired stuff, but his more fantastical and straight-forward horror images, many of which remind me of a combination between Mark Ryden and H.R. Giger, really appeal to the metalhead in me.

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Alice in Wonderland-obsessives take note: the fantastical and whimsically surreal artist, Mark Ryden, will be signing copies of his latest book, The Tree Show, at the MOCA store in Los Angeles on Jan 31st.


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I saw pretty rad illustration in a recent Newsweek of a two-headed snake. I think it was an article about the economy, but I honestly can’t remember. I remembered the artist, though, and looked him up online. Chris Buzelli does some pretty great paintings that liven up articles in Men’s Health, Rolling Stone, and many others. They kind of remind me of Mark Ryden, but with a little more restraint.

Nagi Noda is one busy lady. Although a native of Tokyo, she spent five years in America and has worked up an impressive body of work. In addition to the rad hair hats an MFA would drool over, she’s directed videos for the Scissor Sisters and done work for both Laforet and Nike, amongst others. She also has ties to Jack White and Mark Ryden, who collaborates with her for a fashion line called Broken Label. All the while she still managed to work in a Cannes Festival award in there too.

Loretta Lux’s photographs of children are ever-so-subtly creepy, reminiscent of Mark Ryden’s paintings. She tweeks proportions, depth, color, and lighting in such a way that make her subjects look painted.

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David Chung’s paintings are the result of an over-stimulated, pop-culture saturated imagination vomiting onto the canvas. Candy-colored monkeys, bears, snails, and monsters frolic, fight, and fornicate in a fluorescent snot-drenched wonderland. [see also the artwork of Mark Ryden]

I love the detail and the sense of escapism in Ray Caesar’s digitally rendered artworks. His work reminds me a little of Mark Ryden’s, without the slabs of meat and the lofty price tags.

I’ve always had this urge to experience the great American outdoors, that picturesque world that I’ve seen in countless John Candy reruns. Yes, I’d stay in a rustic log cabin, surrounded by chipmunks and coyotes and sing John Denver songs by the fireplace. Hmmm. Maybe I’ll make it happen one day. Maybe? Nah. [painting by Mark Ryden]

American artist Trenton Doyle Hancock creates elaborate fantasy worlds where colour collides and anything seems possible. Says Wikipedia: ‘The characters which populate his [works] include the Mounds, half-animal, half-plant creatures, which are preyed upon by evil beings called vegans’. Strange but true. And very, very good. [see also Mark Ryden]

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Californian painter Mark Ryden creates fantastic storybook artworks which are technically brilliant and disturbingly – yet beautifully – surrealistic. ‘I often find archetypes in old children’s books and toys, so these things make up a large part of my collection. I am attracted to things that evoke memories from childhood’. [more about Mark Ryden]