I’m not over here trying to Statler and Waldorf my way through fashion week (look, I only tune into this stuff when it gets weird and fun, so I have no idea if we’re even in an official “fashion week” right now or what. There seem to be dozens of them? Whatever.) but can we take a moment to celebrate the brilliant absurdities that make runway shows so captivating?
As someone who genuinely loves fashion in all its forms, I find particular joy in those delightfully outrageous moments where designers push boundaries into the realm of the fantastical and farcical. These are the runway spectacles that make you whisper in awe, “what beautiful madness am I witnessing?” I’ve rounded up my recent Favorite fashion fever dreams not to critique but to revel in the glorious chaos that happens when designers throw caution, convention, and occasionally physics, and quite often good taste, straight out the window.
But also there are some things here that are genuinely lovely! There’s room for all of it, the pretty frocks and the sartorial lunacy, in the eternal wardrobe of my heart.
Junya Watanabe Fall Winter 2025 ready to wear
Alexander McQueen fall 2025 ready to wear
Vivienne Westwood Fall Winter 2025
Rick Owens Fall 2025 Ready-to-Wear Collection
Ann Demeulemeester FW25
Marine Serre Fall Winter 2025
Zimmermann Fall Winter 2025
COMME des GARÇONS FW25
Yohji Yamamoto FW25
Moschino FW25
UNDERCOVER FW25
Noir Kei Ninomiya Fall 2025 Ready-to-Wear Collection
Hodakova Fall 2025 Ready-To-Wear Collection
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If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know one of my original intentions was to share the things I truly love (in addition to sharing pictures of food!) I don’t always do that as often as I like anymore, so every once in a while, I need to take a break from trying to convince people I know the slightest thing about art or perfume or fashion, and instead just say, “Hey! Look at this thing! I like it!”
Because of that aforementioned doctor’s visit and the changes she wants me to make for my health, as well as trying to keep a better eye on spending, I have put a moratorium on clothing shopping for the time being. If my human meatsack is undergoing an evolution, I don’t need to buy any more garments for it as it continues to mutate. In the meantime, I’ve begun some projects that are pretty intensive and consuming, and I don’t have time to be thinking about clothes or what to wear anyway!
I need tried-and-true uniforms, so I’ve gathered up some favorites into a bit of a capsule wardrobe for easy stuff to wear that I don’t have to put one single thought into. They are comfortable and reliable, and they are 99% black because I am both a creature of habit and a creature of the night! Here they are, in no order, because they’re all equally good!
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Arcana Wildcraft Oxomoco is (to my nose, anyway!) the scent of Leonora Carrington’s shadowy, enigmatic “The Feast of Samhain” distilled into fragrance—a realm where darkness consumes light, where fathomless frankincense overwhelms a pale, luminous core with primal intensity. Smoke spirals and weaves through soft coconut milk, creating a landscape of raw, mystical contrasts: hand-captured frankincense emerges not as a delicate whisper but as a profound presence, its tendrils curling against the saline, creaminess like umbral fingers of smoke tracing a tenebrous shroud. Threaded throughout, cedar and amber drift like ghostly mediators—subtle conductors that amplify the tension between the scent’s disparate elements, lending depth to its complex intricacy The coconut milk lurks like a secret silver thread, barely visible beneath the deep, consuming woodiness—both elements distinct, stubborn, refusing to blend yet creating a complex, unresolvable presence, elemental and strange and unutterably glorious.
Heretic Parfum Coeur Noir The first breath of Coeur Noir defies its brooding presentation with an unexpected lightness – a cool pastel candied dust, compressed powder sweetness, like fruit wisps and sugared flower petals ground with chalk. This is anchored by a woody, resinous vanilla, but rather than cream or confection, it calls to mind a delicate, aromatic booklet of papiers d’Armenie. The lightness is deceptive, though. As it settles on skin, the sweetness begins its slow retreat, like an eclipse gradually dimming the sky. What emerges is more contemplative – a dusky, myrrh-like quality, that smoky-sour-shivery incense that suggests the shadows promised by that black heart-shaped box, a liminal space of perpetual twilight chill, never reaching full dark.
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Poppies and Lupine may not be intended as such, and I may be the only one who experiences it thusly, but it feels like a phantom companion to their long-discontinued but much beloved (by me, anyway) Danube. I know it’s a bit lazy to describe a fragrance in terms of another fragrance, but for context, here is what I wrote about Danube many many years ago:
Danube is a beloved scent that is, for me, more about memory than the actual fragrance itself. It is a deep blue aquatic scent – but not salty, ozone-y, beachy aquatic, nor is it murky, swampy aquatic. Like a cold swimming pool on a hot day (maybe if you were adding grapefruit to your pool instead of chlorine) with every blue flower imaginable floating on top of it. Imagine being 6 years old and holding your breath and submerging yourself in a swimming pool, then slo-o-o-wly sinking to the bottom. The water is chilled, you feel like the only person in the world and everything is totally silent. Imagine peering up and seeing the sun streaming down into the water, between all of the blue petals. It’s calm and soothing and serene and is an absolutely a must for hot, sticky weather and for people who haven’t got a swimming pool.
Where Danube carries you into that crystalline submersion, that childhood moment of perfect underwater suspension, Poppies and Lupine exists in the languid aftermath. This is what happens after you’ve surfaced, water droplets evaporating from sun-warmed skin, as you lie half-dozing by the pool’s edge while twilight seeps slowly into the world. The fragrance possesses a deeply narcotic quality that immediately brings to mind Milla Jovovich singing “In a Glade” – that haunting Ukrainian folk melody that seems to exist outside of time, vocals drifting through some ancestral dreamscape. I’ve found myself playing this song on repeat while wearing this scent, each enhancing the otherworldliness of the other, creating a feedback loop of beautiful melancholy.
Imagine moonblooms floating on still waters, their heavy heads nodding in the limpid, liminal space between wakefulness and dreaming, their reflection creating a hypnotic double-image that blurs the line between what’s real and what’s reverie. There’s something dozy-drowsy in its incense-laden whispers, the gentle floral sway of a midnight lullaby. The scent swathes with the unhurried cadence of half-remembered dreams, each note blurring softly into the next as consciousness unspools and drifts. I find myself returning to this scent not for brightness or clarity but for its gentle dissolution of boundaries – those moments when consciousness folds back upon itself and you become both observer and observed, dreamscape and dreamer simultaneously.
DSH Perfumes Emerald Hyrax There’s a softness here that feels almost geological—the kind of green that exists between moss and stone, in those damp crevices where nothing much happens except the quietest possible growth. The space where a fern’s tiniest root might tentatively unfurl, where moisture pools in the smallest shadow, where time seems to pause and collect itself. Like a small, fuzzy creature curling into an impossibly delicate nest of lichen and loam; like a monk’s pillow woven from the most tender moss, bathed in the hazy, frozen light of quartz; like an agate’s whispers of its time in the earth.
Liis Choux Choux There’s an Icelandic milk biscuit balanced between vanilla wafer and hard tack– it’s called Mjólkurkex, but don’t ask me to pronounce it. It’s got the subtle taste of a treat but the tooth-breaking texture of something shockingly punitive. Imagine someone tried to gussy it up with a sifting of icing sugar on top, a powdery dusting through the delicate whorls and swirls of a doily. But maybe that’s not enough, so they’ve added a few fragile curls of sweet cream butter, sculpted in the shape of spring flowers. But also, what if you maybe just wanted a proper dessert? They’ve served a small slice of the airiest, fluffiest whipped lemon chiffon cake, too. Exactly the sort of thing that would make a Scandinavian minimalist weep with complicated emotions.
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Antiquarian clocks that have ticked through the ages,
Dust-covered brooches and haunted earrings,
These are a few of my favorite things.
When the lights dim,
When the wind howls,
When I’m feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don’t feel so bad….!
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“Horror assaults our senses with relentless precision – the crescendo of a nerve-shredding score, the stomach-dropping revelation in a match-cut, the visceral impact of practical effects. Yet there’s one sensory dimension that remains frustratingly out of reach: the olfactory landscape of fear. We can see the expressionist shadows of Nosferatu, hear Tomie’s seductive whispers, feel the controlled violence vibrating beneath American Psycho’s polished surface – but we can only imagine their distinct bouquets of ancient evil, obsessive beauty, and expensive madness.”
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This article was originally published at Haute Macabre.
When initially living on my own in my early 20’s, I received a mysterious package in the mail during one of the first few weeks in my small apartment. In a plain brown envelope, with no return address and no accompanying note, I found a generic paperback mystery novel. Stuck between the pages between chapters three and four was a faded Polaroid of a man with a ridiculously large, dangling penis. His eyes were Xed out, and someone had drawn a slimy booger hanging from his nose. Ew. Gross. But also: unexpected and intriguing!
For weeks I scoured my brain, asking myself over and over who was this mysterious owner of the enormous wiggly peen? Am I supposed to know him? Who defaced his image? What was the significance of the book in which it was tucked? Why had someone mailed this to me in the first place? I had so many questions! The next month my sister telephoned me and asked if I’d gotten the gift she had sent.
Apparently, she shared, while laughing so hard she could barely breathe, she’d found the book at a used bookstore. When she plucked it from the shelf, the photo tumbled out, and in retrieving it from the floor and taking a closer look, she realized that, with a few modifications, she had the perfect anonymous house-warming gift to send me. She was right. It was weird and dumb and perfect, and to this day we giggle about it. We still don’t know who the naked man is, but we will no doubt be mocking him until we are well in our dotage.
What do Marcel Dzama‘s illustrations have in common with my ludicrous sister and the mysterious dick pic? Well, I’ll get to that.
Marcel Dzama’s works, reminiscent of small, intimate illustrations from vintage story books, are rendered in graphite, pen and ink, watercolor, and root beer wash (a solution he discovered by accident and which can make his drawings look as if they are made in blood). Equal parts macabre and mischievous, frightening and fanciful, these delicately wrought, hybrid characters in the midst of their bizarre and disturbing narratives, present a folksy appearance with an surrealist twist and are underscored by a dark, gallows humor.
Receiving his BFA from the University of Manitoba in 1997, Dzama actively creates across mediums, being a prolific drawer, as well as filmmaker, installation and sculpture artist, musician, costume designer. One might recognize his artwork from the creative output of musicians such as Beck or They Might Be Giants and his darkly whimsical works are highly sought after by Hollywood celebrities such as Brad Pitt and Jim Carey.
Do I care about any of that when my gaze falls upon his flacid, feeble aliens and pretentious tree people and the subversive violence committed by a parade of young women shooting arrows, strangling bats, and threatening their sistren with slingshots? Not particularly.
Dzama’s accolades and renown and star-studded endorsements have nothing to do with why I am drawn to strange pageantry of his work. Cartoonish, nightmarish, and utterly enigmatic, I trace the simple lines of his childish faces with my finger, lose myself in the cloudy shades of his muted color palette, and wonder endlessly about all of it. One reviewer of Marcel Dzama: Sower of Discord, writes that Dzama’s works are a “…a fun-house hell where sinners are condemned to an eternity of enigma.” It is this enigmatic quality to the work that compels me to continue staring, despite the unknowing. To seek out more of his wonderfully peculiar art. And of course…to share the mystery.
One might imagine finding a book of these illustrations in a cardboard box of disorganized children’s toys at your neighbor’s garage sale on a cloudy autumn day. Struck at first by the whimsy of these drawings, you will thumb through the pages, your nostalgia slowly turning to puzzlement. Something seems really off here. Just…not quite right. Kinda fucked up, actually–and you’d love a second opinion.
And you know what? It’s your turn to play anonymous benefactor and you’ve got just the sibling to send it to.
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Originally published at Haute Macabre. I am not sure if this artist is still active, but I didn’t want my writings about them lost!
Not being a particularly crafty or artsy person, most works of art seem like the stuff of genius and magic to me–and the humans whose hands call this artistry into being, magicians of a most brilliant caliber. Their talents and techniques, methods and processes appear as arcane practices; creative rites of which I will never, and perhaps should never glean an understanding.
I have always found the fiber arts a little more accessible, though. Perhaps it is because I am a knitter and have an infinitesimal insight into the creation of each small stitch and how they grow upon one another, how a pattern begins to emerge from a jumble of chaos, how a series of charts on paper eventually transmutes into a silken or woolen, tangible item: a simple pair of mitts to warm ones hands, or perhaps an intricate lace shawl, which over many years becomes a beloved heirloom. Cunning manipulations involving yarn and thread and string, and a pointy stick or two–this art of stitchcraft, though no less magical to me…at least I can unravel a bit of its mystery.
One such dark conjurer of thread and needle-based wizardry is Melbourne-based embroidery artist Adipocere.
Austere, and with a minimum of fuss or florid details, Adipocere’s hand-embroidered imagery on natural linen (and, on occasion, human skin) often features the stark outline of the female form flanked by familiars of the feline, arachnid, lepidopteric and chiropteric variety.
At times this companionship evokes an untroubled, companionable silence, as, for example, woman and puss sit side by side a top the placid plateau of an exhumed human skull. Other pieces portray a more unsettling relationship as a feminine figure in languid repose offers her up her skin for the scarlet scratches of a clowder of black cats. The savage and the serene occupy disquieting space together in these scenes of tender violence.
Some might be inclined apply the terms “morbid” or “macabre” to Adipocere’s works, and while the artist has previously interviewed that his inclinations do sway toward sentiments of that nature, in looking at his own embroidery, he does not see any real darkness.
Perhaps, then, it is not a fascination with the disturbing or unpleasant that Adipocere is necessarily attempting to depict with his stitchery, but rather, a sort of comical-surrealism, stemming from his interests in “counter culture and decay of society”. His more recent work, he notes, focuses more generally on trivializing human identity through rather existentially-nihilistic notions.
“I think most of my fiction tends to root from a certain apathy in that sense.”
And though we have noted the prevalence of feminine figures in his embroidery, we learned that they are “solely indicative of the human component in a sentiment, mostly as a type of anchor point to then play with scale. Any human figure appearing [in his work] is usually portrayed to be much more insignificant than in our society.” With regard to the nude aspect of these figures, Adipocere confides that he is hesitant to embroider clothing, as it’s the largest factor that grounds fictitious narrative to a particular time period or region. As much as much as he might like to embroider Victorian-era dresses or Dark Ages garb, it remains a prevalent self-imposed constraint.
We at Unquiet Things are lovers of cats (ailurophiles, if you’re feeling fancy; “crazy cat person” if we’re telling it like it is) and so of course it was imperative to inquire as to the nature of the shadowy cats that grace so many of Adipocere’s canvases. Are they familiars and friends that live in the artist’s home, or perchance shadowy spirit guides? Indulging our curiosity, Adipocere admits that these beloved creatures appear for many reasons and that cats are “terribly important” to his personal well-being (hear hear!) but that being said, he sadly does not live with any, and that maybe he is “subconsciously filling that void.”
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This article was originally published at Haute Macabre.
As the tale goes, jeweler and sculptor of contemporary memento mori Julia deVille, apprenticing under a handful of the greatest and most formidable masters ever known, honed and refined her talismanic skills over the course of several centuries and quietly emerged from her draconian education in the mid-19th century as a master alchemist–with soul almost all intact!
A fanciful origin story perhaps, but one only need briefly glimpse her extraordinary work to fast believe that, as the fabled records note, Queen Victoria did indeed employ deVille as her principal goldsmith, becoming both her supporter and beloved friend. Rumors whisper that with the her majesty’s patronage, deVille was able to create “the most exceptional and heartbreaking regalia” and together, they made mourning a fashionable devotional trend.
It is said that, over the course of time, deVille continued to cultivate her skills and unceasingly reinvented her approach, but however many millennia pass, and whether the medium is jet, obsidian, precious stones, or precious creatures, each jewel has a story to tell, and, by deVille’s hand–very amulet and adornment she creates is first built upon a foundation of utmost love.
And now, dear readers, the facts as they are known to this scholar: Julia deVille’s work is informed by a fascination with the acceptance of death expressed in memento mori jewelry of the 15th to 18th centuries and Victorian Mourning jewelry. Characterized by the use of memento mori symbology from past eras, as well as the methods the Victorians used to sentimentalize death with adornment, deVille uses traditional precious and semi-precious metals and gems, and (on occasion) materials that were once living, such as jet, human hair and taxidermy.
In examining our mortality, her work incorporates motifs that “encourage viewers and wearers to identify with their own fate and challenge a prevalent culture that obsessively plans the future: forget an unknowable tomorrow and instead embrace the present.”
deVille studied at Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE and has, in addition to those credentials, completed a taxidermy mentorship. Her haunting works are characterized by the elegant combination of these fields and ideas, and has been extensively exhibited in Australia as well as in the USA and Europe.
She employs taxidermy as a celebration of of life and sees it as the preservation of something fragile and beautiful; “…my work celebrates the preciousness of life and the power of each and every life,” the artist declares.
And such wondrous celebrations they are! A winsome piglet, swaddled in lace and beads sits sweetly atop a bed of feathers. A gothly mummified feline reclines in dark dignity; a luminous, diamond encrusted corvid skull shimmers and sparkles in avian afterlife. But do not fret, sensitive souls–deVille, a vegan, animal lover, and animal rights champion who ethically sources her materials, further notes on her website, “no sentient (or sapient) beings were harmed for the making of these works.”
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Back in 2008, while I was still finding my voice with a modest little blog chronicling my cooking experiments and knitting projects, I spent countless hours as a devoted reader of other people’s online worlds. Those were the golden days of blogging, when each site felt like discovering someone’s secret diary left open on a cafe table. Though I mainly haunted the corners where home cooks shared their Rancho Gordo bean techniques and no-knead bread recipes, or where I envied the knitters trotting off to Rhinebeck, other blogging spheres existed in parallel – fashion blogs like Sea of Shoes, where a visionary teenage fashion enthusiast transformed vintage finds into fantastic narratives that felt more like glamourous fairy tales than outfit posts.
In early 2024, long after my own writing had evolved from those cozy domestic dispatches into explorations of art and the artfully macabre, I stumbled upon Jane Dashley’s paintings on Instagram. At first, I didn’t realize it was the same Jane as that marvelous fashion blogger! But the jolt of recognition in terms of the artwork was immediate and electric – here was a perfect embodiment of my very favorite vibe, what scholar and mystic Pam Grossman describes as “demented joy” – that quality of being “exuberant without being insufferably cheery, twisted but not cruel, bright but with undercurrents of gravity and shadow.”
It’s a concept that deeply resonates with my own aesthetic sensibilities – that space where childlike wonder collides with adult anxieties to create something electric and strange. In her work, I found this manifest in canvases teeming with impish devils attending formal balls and moonlit bacchanals that spark that same jubilant sense of ecstatic absurdity that I’m always seeking in art. It exists in that delirious twilight where sweetness sours slightly sinister, where lobsters attend midnight revels, bears take tea with unlikely companions, and the devil’s always in the details. Each painting feels like a folkloric postcard from the enchanted midnight woodlands of a surrealist snow globe brimming with the best and weirdest nursery rhymes. In short, it makes me want to dance a madcap jig and scream with delight!
I recently had the chance to speak with Jane about her journey from fashion blogger to painter and co-founder of the fragrance venture Fragraphilia. We delved into the fever-dream world of her canvases, where good and evil play dress-up and switch roles with gleeful abandon, where protective spirits keep watch while offering cake and ice cream sundaes, and devilry and revelry find their faces in furry friends.
I love this photo because it looks like Jane is wearing the most fabulous watermelon fascinator.
Through Sea of Shoes, during the golden age of fashion blogging, you cultivated an extraordinary aesthetic vision – your sophisticated, avant-garde style choices and artful curation created something that transcended traditional fashion documentation. Now, you’re channeling that same transformative sensibility and expressing this distinctive vision into paintings that enchant and beguile. Could you talk about this evolution? How has your eye for the extraordinary – whether in vintage couture or painted dreamscapes – continued to develop and surprise you across these different mediums?
That is so kind of you to say! Thank you so much. I think what drew me to blogging back in the day was a really free-form outlet of expression. I used to do blog posts taping stuff together from magazines and drawing on notebook paper. I could write about anything I wanted and I really did. Besides fashion, I wrote about music and movies and toys I collected, and even my favorite types of fish.As blogging progressed into more of a “job” and the magic of the original blogging days started to dull, I just wasn’t having a lot of fun anymore. But I was also becoming an adult, and I think I just accepted that my job was less fun because that’s what growing up meant. So I kept on for a while, but growing more disenchanted with the passing of time.
Luckily, the pandemic gave me the push to turn the art I was already making into a full-time thing. It’s been the most amazing shift, I never knew I could have this much fun. Ironically, as a working artist and frazzled mother of a toddler, I have very few opportunities to dress up these days. I still definitely see the crossover between my sense of fashion and what I bring up when I am creating a painting. It all comes from the same place, and it’s interesting to see how that plays out over the years.
There’s something delightfully feverish about your work, its whimsical creatures and anthropomorphic animals in vibrant dreamscapes of bacchanals and bonfire nights – you describe it as ‘happiness bordering on delirium.’ How do you achieve this particular emotional frequency in your pieces, and what state of mind are you typically in while creating?
I have a hysterical need to be making as much work as possible at all times. I just counted, and I made 82 finished paintings last year, which does feel like a lot for a year that involved a move and taking care of a toddler. I think my obsession with the work I’m creating, as well as a wolfish desire to make as much of it as I possibly can, contribute to the feverish frequency you’re picking up on! I work on many paintings at once. My notebooks are filled with multiple penciled-in squares that contain very hastily rendered painting ideas, almost like a swatch book of upholstery fabric.
Usually, I have some piece of media going on in the background while I work, be it a movie or an album or an audiobook and I like to listen to them in loops. I listened to the Thandie Newton narration of Jane Eyre four times in the last year. I’ve been playing Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee over and over. I like getting into a really obsessive and repetitive energy, and I think it’s a form of gratitude to wring everything you can from other art that influences you.
Your work seems to draw from timeless storytelling traditions – from folklore and fairy tales to the profound magic of Studio Ghibli films, even reimagining classical narratives like Swan Lake – where ordinary moments can suddenly open into something extraordinary, where boundaries between mundane and magical dissolve. How do these narrative traditions influence the way you think about enchantment and possibility in your own work?
I think I have a very typical girl obsession with fairy tales, especially coming from a household of sisters. You grow up hearing them, and they enchant you while also instructing you on what you should want and usually about how you must suffer to get it. And then you actually come of age, and you grow hair, and you start bleeding, and you’re gripped with pain, and you’re kind of repulsed but compelled toward boys and men. It’s so awful and hilarious. But you still love those goddamn fairy tales! Luckily there’s Angela Carter. I guess many of the origins of fairytales are just women trying to make sense of the horrible things that have happened to them. I think this is healthy and wonderful, and playing into these narratives makes me feel connected to the lineage of humanity.
Your paintings seem to exist in an interconnected dream world populated by recurring characters – cats and lobsters, bunnies and teddy bears, protective magical creatures alongside mischievous ones like your signature devil in their ballgown. Could you tell us about how this personal mythology evolved and what these figures represent in your creative universe?
I grew up surrounded by animals, my mom was a big dog rescue person so we always had 5-10 dogs in the house at once. We had a bull mastiff wander into our garage one random day, and ever since then, my mom has been part of bull mastiff rescue groups. They are such magnificent dogs. I loved to draw their beautiful strong limbs and toenails, I got interested in animal shapes this way. I also had a black cat as an imaginary friend/inner guiding voice until I was way too old to admit, which probably explains a lot of my work. My earliest memories are dreams I had of large freshwater fish, such as the Amazonian river fish, the Arapaima. I have a LOT of weird animal hang-ups that would take me a long time to detail, and I would say they are all the impetus for almost all of my work.
Days before I gave birth to my son, I wasn’t sleeping well and I stayed up painting this masked tiger figure that just came to my imagination. I felt like this tiger captured the spirit of my son and it felt like a kind of a creative spirit labor that took place before any kind of actual birth labor. I always knew that tiger would represent my son to me. And what’s weird is that the toy my son became most attached to early on is a toy tiger! He has a stuffed toy tiger that does absolutely everything with us, and he gravitated to it all on his own. I spend all day every day talking to this toy tiger with my son. It wigs me out sometimes!
In your work, there’s often a fascinating interplay between light and shadow – literal and metaphorical. Your celebrations have an edge of wildness, your brightest pieces pulse with an almost supernatural energy. You’ve spoken about darkness as a space where we “tune in, maybe better than we have ever tuned in before.” How do you think about the role of darkness in your work – not just as an aesthetic choice, but as a way of seeing or understanding?
People always talk about the darkness in my work, and sometimes, I have a really hard time seeing it because I have so much fun making it.Then I get honest with myself and I have to admit that I’ve painted like, carcasses and bunnies being mauled in pretty recent memory. Right now, I am painting naked horny fairy women chasing hairy beasts. To me, it’s so second nature to bring in aspects of fear and death because that’s life. I think, as children, we have a natural compulsion towards darkness because we’re trying to make sense of all the fears we can’t understand yet. Children integrate darkness into their play and imaginary worlds so that they can learn to cope with it later on. Maybe I’m still doing that.
I’m shamelessly nosy about artists’ creative spaces! Could you invite us into your studio – what does your workspace look like, what are your must-have tools and materials, and do you have any particular rituals or routines when you’re creating?
Last year, we bought a home with windows and a pretty big garage added to it. It’s been my studio, and every day, I could kiss the ground because I’m so grateful to have so much space to work. I work best when I have a lot going on at once. My studio is crammed with many works in progress and lots of notes taped to the wall. I have two tables in the middle, one where I do small work or admin stuff and one where I can pack paintings or for a friend to come to work alongside me in my studio. I do my large work against the walls. I work almost every night, and I play music and always keep a stash of pimento cheese in my freezer to keep my motivation up!
Can you tell us about a particular piece that marked a significant evolution or breakthrough in your artistic journey?
Christmasland is a painting I did in 2022, and upon its completion, I was very pleased with the level of weirdness it achieved. The stare of the cat’s eyes holds something that feels like a part of myself. I felt maybe it was too weird for other people to like, but when I shared it on Twitter, it got a huge response, and I gained a whole new audience. I’m still very grateful for this experience, it gives me hope to this day when I try something that feels too awkward or wonky and I feel the temptation to abandon it. I remember Christmasland!
Let’s talk about your artistic lineage – what were the formative experiences or artworks that shaped your creative vision when you were starting out? Who are the artists, past or present, that you feel in conversation with?
I come from a very creative family; my mom, my aunt, and my grandma are all artists in some way. Early on in my life, and I couldn’t say when, I had a concept of what folk and outsider art was. My grandma was really into buying and selling antiques back in the day and she was always showing me art or movies when I stayed at her house. She liked John Waters movies and outsider art a lot. She was definitely not a normal grandma. I remember being 6 or 7 years old and being taken on a school field trip to the Dallas Art Museum and thinking to myself that while I appreciated the skill of these very stiff and formal American landscape paintings we were being taken to see, it just didn’t excite me like the paintings in the folk art books I would look at. Art books were a big thing in my life early on, I was lucky to have parents that nurtured what they saw that I loved. So, I was interested in this tension between what I was being told “good art” was and the art that actually excited me. Outsider art, folk art, whatever you want to call it…all of the stuff I liked when I was a teenager is still the best stuff to me. I have books on Nellie Mae Rowe and Joseph Yoakum that I bought when I was 16 years old that I look at all the time. I also remember being very gripped by the painting “Sitting on a Bench with Border” by Rose Wylie and I probably saw it around the time it was done, 2007. I printed it out on my computer and just stared at it constantly. Rose’s work was a huge shift for me when I first saw it, and she is still one of my biggest inspirations.
You and your husband Jeff, created Fragraphilia – a personal journal, review site, and podcast celebrating the artistry of niche perfumery. Could you share a bit about your history with scent and how this sensory world has evolved alongside your visual art? How do you find these different forms of artistic expression – the visible world of your paintings and the invisible landscapes of fragrance – informing and enriching each other?
I really never thought I was a perfume person until we got a Serge Lutens counter here in Dallas. I grew up in the era of Victoria’s Secret body sprays, which turned me off of perfume for the most part. Then, when I smelled Serge Lutens for the first time, my world shifted. I had never thought perfume could be so expressive. I want to say my first Serge bottle was Daim Blond, but for years, I wore Fille en Anguilles as my one and only perfume. My husband was a niche fragrance guy before we met, which I guess was pretty unusual back in those days.
Having a frag-head husband is really fun, especially since our tastes are nearly the same. Lately both work and childrearing take up a lot of the time that my husband and I used to have just for each other, so scent is a special thing that keeps us connected throughout the day. We always keep each other abreast of what scents we’re wearing throughout the day and talk about the wearing experience. The studio is a very lonely place, especially on dark, long nights, and my fragrance is often the only company I keep in there. It can absolutely set the tone for a painting session. I have just blind-bought Reve d’Ossian on your recommendation and I absolutely intend to use it as a creative guide in a new series of work. I never blind buy, I am so excited to be taken on this journey. Thank you for the inspiration!’
I’m unabashedly nosy about all the little things that bring joy and delight to creative people’s lives! Would you share some current favorites – this could be anything at all, from your perfect morning beverage to a holy grail skincare product to the coziest painting socks to whatever show you’re binge-watching right now. What small pleasures are making your days a bit more magical?
This year, I gave myself the gift of a History Hit subscription, and I can’t stop telling everyone how great it is. It’s educational but it is also an escape to a different time. I really like the show Gone Medieval and Not Just the Tudors. They also do these great documentaries you can watch on their app where they take you on tours of castles and stuff like that. I keep them playing while I work. I also love audiobook performances. One I loved last year was Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian as read by John Pirhalla. It’s western folk horror, and I loved what the audiobook performance added to the story. I listened to it a few times in a row. Lately, I’ve done a lot of Edith Wharton audiobooks, too.
Your work often feels like it exists in its own dreamy universe, but I’d love to know what inspires you in the real world – do you have favorite places you visit for inspiration, certain times of day when ideas come to you, or particular environments that spark your creativity?
My happy place is definitely Half Price Books. We are lucky to have the flagship location here in Dallas. It’s very calming, and I like the dig. The art book selection is not as good as it used to be, sadly. Before the pandemic, I used to find the most insane rare books in their art collection, no matter how frequently I went. I think that they started culling some of the good ones and selling them online in recent years. I still really like going there when I need inspiration. I started collecting children’s books as a teenager, and I love that I have an excuse to buy even more now that I’m a mom. You can find great old ones that are out of print at Half Price! I hear whispers they may open a tiki bar inside of the flagship. That would basically be heaven on earth for me.
You’ve built these remarkable creative worlds – through fashion, through painting, through fragrance – each one distinct but somehow connected by your distinctive vision. What have you learned about following your creative instincts across these different territories? What would you share with others who feel drawn to explore multiple forms of artistic expression?
I can see now that having played in so many fields of creativity, all of it matters. Every little sketch or every little note you wrote to yourself or every song or movie you’ve fallen in love with. And because of that, it’s so important to honor those fragile beginnings. It doesn’t matter how far into your artistic journey you are, whenever you are creating anything, there will be parts that just feel horrible. Often, the beginning or the near-completion point of a project brings on abject misery and despair. Don’t throw away your work! You have to be kind to yourself and honor the first spark of inspiration you felt and see it through or save it for some other time. I often come back to years-old ideas or inspirations. It’s so important to save everything and to treat the artifacts of your creative labors with tender love and care. It takes work to cultivate, most artists have fragile egos and are their own worst critics. Even if the time isn’t right for an idea at the moment, it will come back around, so save all of your notebooks and sketches.
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