Lou Benesch Creates Intriguing Watercolor Paintings Featuring Mythical Creatures

Lou Benesch is a Paris-based artist who creates captivating watercolor paintings featuring mythical creatures that borrow their features from plants, animals, and humans.

Benesch taps into animals, literature, folktales, Greek myths, and fairytales as sources of inspiration. This leads to fascinating creations like humanoid horses, butterfly-winged beasts, flower snakes, and more.

Benesch paintings are unique in the subjects they cover but also in the way they are created. She doesn’t sketch her works. Instead, she writes them down and uses the descriptions of her imagination to transfer them to paper.

“Images come to me almost as visions and there is something almost otherworldly that pushes me to lay them on paper,” she explained in a recent interview with It’s Nice That.

Benesch is involved in a number of creative endeavors, including designing exhibition catalogs and packaging and creating illustrations for books and posters. However, her art practice has recently taken the driver’s seat, and the artist is looking to focus on growing as a painter.

You can check out her works in person at Los Angeles’ Hashimoto Contemporary, where they are exhibited as part of the “Potluck” exhibition. If you can’t make it to LA, check out Benesch’s Instagram account or scroll below.