Llewellyn Mejia Draws Your Nightmares on Peyote [Art]

Drawing from tattoo and graffiti styles, Medieval woodcuts, Mexican engravings, occult iconography and perhaps even some early Disney animation, Llewellyn Mejia creates images that are at once compelling and repellant. His illustrations seem to reach into the cultural subconscious and pull out its most powerful symbols: religious gestures, unlucky cats, bare bones, lapping flames and evil eyes. He then assembles them into unnatural collages that are distressing to look at, but hard to turn away from.

Many of Mejia's pieces seem like they would be equally at home plastered to an alley wall or illustrating an ancient tome on monsters and magic. Their psychedelic nature ties in with a strong sense of mysticism, as if these were small insanities glimpsed during heavy meditation--or while on heavy medication.

You can see more of Mejia's artwork on his Flickr stream (be warned, it gets a little nipply in there), but I'm rather partial to his Tumblr, where you can step back and see the wide range of influences that inform his bizarre scenes.