A toad, in profile, stares regally at the viewer, his great horizontally-slitted eye open wide and glimmering in gold and green and darkness, his lips a long diagonal slash down. He is lordly, malevolent, and kind of cute. 

The Toad King

A digital collage featuring colorful markings behind black and white images of women being baptized with the text "Better to Pass Away than Fall Away".

Lukewarm

Colorful surreal cartoon style character face.

Healer-15

Double Rainbow 

Monochromatic white, black and gray digital illustration of a black cat on stone railing of castle in the the light of a midnight full moon. 

She Rules Her Kingdom by the Light of the Moon

A digital photo of warm-toned, multi-colored flowers intentionally blurred by camera movement during exposure, then manipulated in Photoshop by slicing the image into strips, overlaying them over the original blurred image

Blur Study #1

A digital painting of a pair of multicolored hands, broken into pieces, floating against a background of stars, bolts, and shards. 

Should We Crush His Sweet Hands?

A tiger watching a young girl with a parrot on her shoulder take a cooling dip deep in the jungle.

Jungle Dip

This is a digital transformation of a photo in to an "abstracted energy portrait" in mandala form

though a mother's eye

A print with stingrays closely swimming together.

Stingray

A drawing of a red-haired figure contemplating about a mountain, turtle, and fishes.

Appetite

A garden with dark shadows that hide a portrait, a tall building, and the background is a military map.

Garden Scene

In a night landscape suffused with cloud-filtered moonlight, a young magician displays the energy from a glowing sphere to a spirit that inhabits the skeleton of a deer.

The Magician

A woodblock print of silhouetted trees against a blue and white winter landscape.

First Snow

Lovers

A brightly contrasting image of a lionhead door knocker in grayscale with a bright red background. 

San Francisco Door Knocker

An outline of a girl (me) against a black background. She’s looking down and her eyes are brown. Her hair and eyelashes are pink and she has highlighted strands of different shades of pink running through her hair. Her skin is outlined in blue. She’s wearing a jade earring and a red and white mask that has a tropical plant design.

Preservation

An impressionistic hand-pressed monotype print in black & white of a couple coming together at the end of the day to share an intimate dance in their kitchen.

Coming Home

Illustration of beautiful purple clematis on a railing. 

Clematis

A digital collage featuring scans of well- known Mattise paintings, augmented beyond recognition. Hypersaturated colors bleed into one another, with unnatural movement as the viewer drifts into an otherworldly simulation. 

Superfluous Churn 

A painterly print of a sunflower with dainty planets and stars suspended from it on strings. 

Solar Sunflower

Because of the great changes in the world in 2020, many seemingly fixed life paths are changed this year. As a student who graduates this year, I feel more anxious and confused. So, I made this illustration to describe my feeling about graduate in 2020. I draw the graduation hat and the cactus in black and white which means the frustrating feeling of 2020. And the flower on the cactus colored pink which means hope. 

Happy Graduation in 2020

Digital photo of a Cecropia moth - look at the edges of the wings, do you see the "snake eyes" that protect the moth from predators? The frame is made with cigar bands, that have been glued and hammered onto an old textured metal frame found in a junk store.

Snake Eyes - Cecropia Moth 

Nine squares, each representing a landscape somewhere between Minneapolis and Seattle, and then back again.  Each captures elements of sky, mountains and colors, capturing the weather and the time of day as well as the unique landscape of the moment.

Roadtrip

A pink flamingo/unicorn hybrid stands in the water of a bay as the sun sets in the background 

Flaminicorn

A black and white linocut print of a simplified house with deer legs, appearing to swiftly move to the right and trailing smoke.  The print is in a black wooden frame.

On to the Next Thing

Spikey-haired person in a suit and face mask before a Japanese pattern.

Wear A Mask

Black, white, and grey tones expressively cover the composition, with bold linear marks, creating a abstracted landscape.

Repurposed No.3

A group of farmers hold a giant pigeon on their shoulders. 

Peace

The shadow of a window frame on a young girls face with colorful images in her hair.

In the End

This is a circlism digital art piece of a well known video game character named Zenyatta. Each circle is a solid color and individually placed to form the shadows and highlights.

The Toad King, 2020

Mike Gainor