Los Angeles-based artist Edith Waddell creates riveting illustrations that call upon nature, otherworldly imagery, and human conflict. These explorations present both absorbing narratives and straightforward studies. In a statement, the artist talks about the themes she commonly explores.
“My artwork is an exploration into the human psyche,” the artist says. “I use elements taken from flora, fauna and my own recurrent dreams to personify internal emotional conflicts on such subjects as phobia, genetic experimentation, maternity, narcissism, seduction and spirituality. Fragments from the exterior natural world, as well as our own internal emotional world, inspire the concepts in my work. This conceptual material offers me a wellspring of symbolic language that allows me to compose anthropomorphic floral arrangements and whimsical hybrid creatures.”
Waddell has a new show at La Luz de Jesus gallery, kicking off August 4.
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Despite the meticulous control and calculated perspectives, Canadian artist 
Kushana Bush is known for her packed, figurative gouache paintings, with influences from traditional Mughal and Persian miniatures, the Italian Renaissance, Japanese ukiyo-e, and beyond converging. Recent work takes a singular—yet still dynamic—approach. The New Zealand artist infuses contemporary reflections and interactions into each corner of her works, each containing several narratives worth investigating.