Australian artist Alex Louisa draws upon life and death in nature with fervor in her soft pastel artworks. Primarily using PanPastels on textured paper, she is able to exhibit her unique fascination for her subject’s peculiarities. Among her still life and landscape drawings, birds and their features are the most common subjects in her work. Their softness is contrasted against that of callous skulls and bones, each rendered with an eye for small complexities such as veins and divots. In her artist statement, she writes, “I have a huge box of items that have been gathered through my wanderings – feathers, leaves, seedpods, lichen, shells, insects and bones – and I look forward to drawing and painting them all. By sharing the natural elements that captivate me the most, I hope to encourage everyone to take a closer look at their surroundings – whether it be a bird on a branch above their head, or the dried leaves beneath their feet – and to find the intricate details that may have previously evaded their eyes.” Louisa most recently exhibited in Flower Pepper gallery’s panda inspired group show, “Xiong Mao”.
Italian artist 
While Rob and Christian Clayton (collectively known as the 