Tara Mcpherson

I have been looking at the art of Tara Mcpherson over the holidays, initially drawn to it by a book cover I saw on Amazon, (which I bought based on the cover and the inside previews) I loved the artwork inside, it reminded me of Mark Ryden works, I love how the images are sweet, colorful and have that sort of icing texture that reminds you of cakes and sweets! but at the same time they depict somewhat gory ideals, for example Mark Ryden draws giant cuddly teddy bears that upon first glance seem cute and friendly but upon further inspection have a cold evil kind of look, it's hard to explain. He also paints little girls being eaten by trees, which I think is just F*****g awesome! and Tara's work is similar in that way, for example one of her pictures is off a happy smiling girl in a swimsuit but then you notice the rubber toy float she has is actually going through a whole in her body, she also has a fascination with hearts and most of her female portrayals have heart shaped holes in their chests which is clearly rather symbolic and alot of people will be able to relate to it, (I'm actually getting one of her artworks as a tattoo in a few weeks!) there is something odd about looking at such gory content, but minus the dark colors, slime and guts to go with it, instead you are greeted with sugary colors and almost edible textures that draw you in almost like the window display of the most scrumptious fairytale cake shop you could imagine, only when you get inside you realize your actually in Sweeney Todds barber shop! and yet you still stay because you are getting to view these things that we are all morbidly curious about in one way or the other, yet in an addictive childlike way.

This sort of stuff also makes me think of Tim Burton, I love his work too and I can't wait to go and see his new film: "Coroline" I have both "The nightmare before christmas" and "the corpse bride" and most of his films, I love his dark sense of comic horror and will be drawing inspiration from it and Tara Mcpherson's work for my next video project!