Cynthia James is a contemporary artist who creates oil paintings of fantastical plants and insects in her “Bee Series”. Inspired by her experience living in the Yucatán jungle, James imagines a botanical world that is both beautiful and menacing, where bees and plants coexist in a delicate balance.
James uses the 18th-century style of “grotesquerie” to portray the forms and colors of her subjects, creating a contrast between the realistic and the surreal. Her paintings are also a commentary on the environmental issues that threaten the survival of bees and other pollinators, such as global warming, pesticides, and genetic modification. James hopes to take the viewer on a journey into a dreamlike setting, where the bees are the protagonists of a story of survival and adaptation.
We began to see the environment change rapidly as global warming increased along with the use of pesticides damaging bees and butterflies. We saw butterflies in swarms in the 1990s, but we never expected their disappearance to occur so quickly. Pesticides and genetically modified seeds permeated with antibacterials are new elements shocking the finely balanced interplay between humans and food sources.
Cynthia James
More info: Website, Instagram (h/t: Colossal).
