Aurel Schmidt

Executed with painstaking detail, Aurel Schmidt’s Body Swallows World, pictures a fairytale landscape turned nightmare. Rendered in coloured pencil with acrylic paint highlights Schmidt’s forest allures with the organic rhythms of vivification and decay, as thousands of tiny hand drawn bugs, worms, snakes, and creepy crawlies devour the scene. Reminiscent of Durer’s The Large Turf or Arcimboldo’s composite figures, Schmidt’s drawing combines beauty and horror in its microcosmic embellishment, creating a sense of awe in its meticulous craftsmanship and allegorical subject matter.