JennyBird Alcantara’s “Creatures of Saintly Disguise” at Varnish Fine Art

 
Last Saturday, one of our favorite pop surrealist painters JennyBird Alcantara (who we’ve been covering on the site since she appeared in our first print issue) opened her solo show, “Creatures of Saintly Disguise,” at Varnish Fine Art in San Francisco. Hints of pagan mythology and Japanese anime dance across the paintings, melting into a cartoonish, enchanted world dominated by flora and fauna. Delicate girl-deer hybrids populate the majority of the new works, their dainty hooves and large eyes create a soft ambiance of benevolent, goddess-like spirits. But glimmers of fear darken the pleasant mood. The human-doe characters appear persecuted by floating arrows; their entrails lie exposed, their hearts are torn open for us to view. The paintings seem to speak to the human tendency to clumsily destroy beauty in an attempt to possess it. Take a look at some opening night photos.

 

Cake artist Dante Nuño of Fire and Icing created a JennyBird-themed cake for the show