Camille Rose Garcia: Sweet and Sour Storyteller

Camille Rose Garcia tells stories in which sticky sweet characters maneuver through monstrous worlds of greed, temptation, and destruction. She uses pink swans and smiling cupcakes to tackle issues like addiction, environmental destruction, and corporate greed.
Each of Garcia's paintings has an accompanying story or theme. If you have the chance to catch one of her gallery shows, you'll see the paintings are usually displayed with a beautifully lettered painted piece outlining the story for that particular body of work. The story behind the Dreamtime Escape Plan series (featured above) was "Created a short time after the giant tsunami that wreaked havoc on parts of Asia. Disaster is an everyday occurrence in this flooded world, the characters take pills, sleep a lot, and plan elaborate escapes from the quagmires implding around them."
Camille's paintings have a balance exhibits her incredible skill as an artist. Her pieces are elaborately layered and have a real sense of depth and texture while also being "super flat", so they look like the pages of a storybook.
Camille grew up in Orange County, California, and was very much influenced by living in close to Disneyland, the "happiest place on earth", while witnessing darker things happening just outside Disney's walls.

Visiting one of Camille's exhibits is literally like stepping into another world. There are huge sculptural pieces surrounded by theatrical looking sets, and plush dolls that scale the walls. In addition to her amazing artist books, she also has a series of limited edition vinyl toys.
Camille Rose Garcia holds a wonderfully distorted mirror up to our society, and tells stories we all know in a new and different kind of way. She blends the sweet with the sour to create a mix that is intoxicating and irresistible.

To see more of Camille Rose Garcia's work, visit her website http://www.camillerosegarcia.com