San Francisco based painter Jennybird Alcantara is a pearl- handled dagger wrapped in black satin, proving with her successful new show that she is a force to be watched. Her new, large body of work, 'Treacherous Gardens' opened late last month at Varnish Fine Art gallery in her native city. The show features paintings based around a subversive yet delicious mythological world she has spent years cultivating and exploring. With each new show the mastery of her painting techniques, themes and detail orientation becomes breathtakingly elevated.

Throughout the body of work she alternates between tiny, intimate portraits and sweeping scenes set in brightly colored woodland landscapes or aquatic settings. Most of the work was created with oil and acrylic paints on panels, giving the work a slick, glossy exterior, other smaller pieces were created with black and colored inks on paper; many of which were framed in exquisite antique frames. Handmade dolls that were painted with the same painstaking attention to detail as the larger pieces sat as guardians on shelves between the paintings. Her broad color palette often served to highlight the relationship between the characters and their surroundings; the teal glow of the faces of some of the female characters resonated with the aquatic settings while the pink skies often smoothly contrasted with the dark narratives unfolded on the panels.

Using the veins of her proclaimed inspirations of fairy tales, freak shows and Victorian traditions; 'Treacherous Gardens' continues to explore the complexity of our dual natures, specifically the balance of our "inner" and "outer" landscapes and often manifested by perfectly balanced twins. The narrative paintings feature an array of characters, many of which are hybrid beings; half or part human and half or part animal. The result is eerie, unexpected and surprisingly beautiful and further serves to convey the idea of connectedness and between our animal instincts and human emotions. Some of the figures, as in many of her past works, feature holes or portals in their bodies that have additional landscapes and scenes co-existing or conflicting with the external narrative. Often the threat of danger or death looms over the characters creating a feeling of anxiety and melancholy. These complexities allow the work to exist on many readable levels; the brilliant execution of the pieces is immediately aesthetically pleasing while the psychological threads and literary references create a deeper, communicative layer for the viewers.

Words by J.L. Schnabel. Photos provided by the artist. {moscomment}