Boston based artist
Cai Vail renders her ornate, and sometimes grotesque images with a combination of watercolors and digital touches. The beauty of
death
is a common theme in her flowing figures and animals in a state of
decay. Here, humans and animals morph together into surreal beings.
Historically, anthropomorphism in storytelling allowed hunters to
sympathize with their hunted
animal
kin. Seeing them paired together like this, one can’t help but imagine
Vail’s victorious huntress and her kills perishing poetically.
“Spark” (2014), ink, watercolor and digital
Vail shares similarities to watercolor artists Kikyz1313 (featured here) and Caitin Hackett (here),
with references to Art Nouveau, not only in flora and fauna, but in her
line work. What seperates Vail artisically is a visual tension between
organic shapes and graphic compositions that shouldn’t work, but do. In
her ink and watercolor “Spark”,
flowers
awkwardly obstruct her subject’s face but balance is maintained between
the fragile blossoms and heaviness of the silhouette. The result can be
described as dramatic, yet delicate and emotional at the same time.
Her recent illustrations depart from her previously softer palette to explore bold colors while implementing the same
graphic elements. She blogs her
process
which takes us from lush, rendered graphite drawings, artworks in their
own right, to the inked finish. Take a look at some of Vail’s artwork
below.
Process work:
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