The Great Wild Wizard, 2024

    This was a digital illustration of my dog, Reggie, dressed as a grand wizard. The piece was a lighthearted take on re-wilding a city's concrete jungle through humorous imagery. 

    This project was based around the relationship between re-wilding and non-human relationships, so I drew my dog taking down capitalism. My dog is incredibly important to me, and outside of this class and my Media Arts final I have never included him in my work. I knew that to dismantle capitalism my dog would need something stronger than his big wide head, so I decided to take my love for fantasy and make him a wizard. I really wanted to focus on my rendering ability within my illustrations, so using my dog was a perfect choice in terms of content.

    Before I came to this though I decided to branch away from the usual artists I turn to for inspiration, and while neither of these new artists fit my style I found inspiration in Canadian artist Tsema and Mike Bourscheid. I was a huge fan of the whimsical aspect of Bourscheid’s work, his sculptures are all very lighthearted and bizarre takes on what it means to rewild oneself. In Tsema’s work she takes a more serious approach on the effects of capitalism on nature,  however, it was what inspired me to have Reggie situated within a city. Both of their works fascinated me, maybe even my favorite artists that we looked at in class this semester.

Works Cited

Bourscheid, Mike. Mike Bourscheid. Mike Bourscheid, 2025, www.mikebourscheid.com. 

Tsema. Tsema, 2025, www.tsema.ca.