Super Natural. 2007. pencil and oil based pencil on paper. 37 x 78 inches (94 x 198.1 cm)

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Super Natural, completed in 2006, marks AUREL SCHMIDT‘s entrance into the prestigious Dakis Joannou Collection. Executed with painstaking detail and rendered in coloured pencil with acrylic paint, this “self-portrait” pictures a fairytale landscape turned nightmare: the organic rhythms of vivification and decay, as thousands of tiny hand drawn bugs, worms, snakes, and creepy crawlies devour the scene.

“The piece is a life-size bizarro-world portrait of the artist as a young woman; as shy and unassuming as AUREL first seemed, her drawn alter-ego betrayed the fierce and wild woman that I would come to know later. That is not to say her boobs are be composed of snakes and maggots, but rather that her spirit is in touch with elements of the natural and the all-too-human in a way far more sophisticated than her twenty-five years should allow.” – by KATHY GRAYSON, Director at Deitch Projects

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