We’ve seen many artists draw inspiration from the animal world, but no one is doing it in the way Lucia Heffernan is. She found viral fame on Instagram thanks to her quirky and extremely relatable paintings that show how animals would live their lives if they were human.
Heffernan’s art is an exploration of her lifelong fascination with animals, and it allowed her to imagine animals in human situations and find some humor in them by putting mice, chicks, dogs, and many other animals front and center.
“Through my paintings, I seek to give animals a voice and a personality, while making light of our uniquely human existence… This collision between animal and human sensibilities creates a whimsical, theatrical, and often humorous world that viewers can relate to on an emotional level,” she told Bored Panda.
Heffernan’s art is often inspired by real-life scenes that would look preposterous in the animal kingdom. After imagining herself in these same situations, she roughly sketches the idea—and that’s when the real work starts.
Once she comes up with a clear story, she puts it together in Photoshop by using different animals, objects, and backgrounds, taking them in and out as she goes along. From dinosaurs taking selfies to chicks doing yoga, the sky is the limit for Heffernan, and each of her paintings is more hilarious than the last.
