Trevor Henderson
Born in 1986, Canadian Artist Trevor Henderson is a surrealist digital artist known for his horror-themed artwork often featuring creatures. He had gained popularity online for creating eerie, cryptid-like monsters in a vintage-style filter.
He had been interested in the horror genre from a young age, his father was the first to introduce him to then genre and his parents have been supportive of his work ever since. His most well known piece of work is a cryptid called ‘Siren Head’ which he created in 2018, a game developer had made a game for ‘Siren Head’ in 2018. Henderson started to become well known and famous in 2020 due to famous YouTubers such as Markiplier and Jacksepticeye who had played the game and introduced his work to their communities.
His work also raised to fame due to the ‘Cursed Images’ culture. people would often use Henderson’s images and combine them into a compilation of cursed images along with creepy or cheerful/unfitting music in the background. These compilations would get millions of views on YouTube which further pushed Henderson’s work out.
Henderson creates his art by “I draw on top of photos using a couple specific photoshop brushes, and then play around with filters like noise and gaussian blur to try and mesh the two together!”. He has created hundreds of creatures, some of his most popular creations are called Cartoon Cat, Bridge Worm, Long Horse, Anxious Dog and many more. His creatures come in three different groups, Creatures (the normal ones), the Giants/Titans and the Giants/Misty Titans (that only appear in foggy or cloudy days).
Anthi Kollia
“Photography was the first form of art that made me feel uniquely different in my early years of all the forms I tried and experimented with.”
Greek photographer Anthi Kollia began her photography journey in 2017 and is currently studying photography at the University of West Attica to further develop her skills, her early work explored the themes of beauty, emotion and human expression. Her work often reflects deep emotional states such as madness, despair, and vulnerability.
Her work often conveys a surreal and dreamlike atmosphere, she blends reality with the subconscious to explore the intersection of dreams and emotions. Kollia seeks to capture the inner world of her subjects by turning their emotional states into visual narratives.
One of her projects called “Ophelia” was inspired by Shakespeare and his theme of tragic heroine, it specifically focuses on the themes of madness and sorrow.
Evaluation
I’ve decided to use these three photographers as reference to my own project because of their unique styles, compositions and how their images look overall.
Firstly, I decided to look at Trevor Henderson’s work, I really like his nightmarish style featuring creatures that give a spine-chilling sensation and how he fuses reality with these creatures to convey the feeling/image of a nightmare. I chose him as my first photographer to reference because he inspired me with new ideas of how I will present the “Dream/Nightmare” aspect of my images.
I then chose Anthi Kollia as my second photographer because of her dream-like ethereal images. I really like how she has used a veil/cloth because it adds more of an ethereal aesthetic to her work. I want to reference her because she portrays the beautiful and dramatic side of reality/dreams which is something I want to include in my own images. In other words I chose her due to the aesthetic of her work.
Websites/Links used: