Chinese artist Zhou Fan creates whimsical depictions of natural growths gone amuck: fungi, weeds and fluorescent drippings of alien goo stack upon characters’ heads and faces like strange, invasive species. Fan says that the inspiration for these colorful paintings came from a dream he had in which jellyfish fell from the sky and became mushrooms. The human characters appear to be overtaken by these extraterrestrial entities as they lodge themselves onto their faces and limbs. Fan’s paintings have a flat, illustrative quality that evokes Japanese Pop Art and animation (Miyazaki and Murakami come to mind when viewing his imaginative works). Fan described that in one piece, a little boy is crying because he doesn’t want his dream to end, perhaps a reflection of the artist’s own penchant for daydreaming and fantasizing.
The cerebral paintings of 
The illustrations of 19-century ornithologist John James Audubon are some of the most influential paintings of nature in both science and fine art. Now, all 435 of his "Birds of America" watercolors are available for free, hi-res downloading. From the American Avocet to the Zenaida Dove, each was produced from hand-engraved plates, works originally printed between 1827 and 1838.
Whether on a wall or canvas, you can feel the influences of pop, graffiti culture, advertising, and both high- and low-brow art in