Hunter Clarke
(Ardencroft, DE)
Artist Website
Practice of the blood, Oil on panel, 16" x 16"
I like creating characters that are animal/human hybrids and putting them in the stage-setting of a background abstracted from historical textile patterns, often with some messiness and hidden blood. I like to think of the animal-women collectively as a "beastiary," much like the medieval compendiums which would have an illustration of each animal accompanied by a moral lesson. The lesson these ladies are quite upfront about is that they are animals.. who eat, copulate, bleed, feed their children, and die, like all other animals. At first, like many viewers, I felt my creatures were bizarre, if beautiful too, but now I share their relaxed comfort with their unhidden feral display. The animal-women reveal the primal, undomesticated nature within our tempered, societal selves.