The Perfection of Pixiwillow

I recently happened upon the site of Michelle Bradshaw, who creates some of the most amazing fantasy art sculpture I've ever seen. Pixiwillow is the name of her business and it encompasses her interest in faeries, pixies, storybook characters, and other assorted creatures, many of them covered in fur.

This Mad Hatter sculpture is part of her series, "Wonderland Asylum". Be sure to check out Alice, the Cheshire Cat, and the March Hare when you visit her site.

This sculpture, called "Letting Go" is one of my favorites. Michelle says she gets inspiration from "a story, a comment or expression, a walk in the woods, a dream or circumstance, a title, etc . . .". Simply incredible work!

And then, there's Wednesday Addams, one of my favorite TV characters, after the lovely Lily Munster, of course. Looking at Michelle's work, it seems even more amazing knowing that she's basically self-taught and has only been sculpting these fantasy art pieces for about five years.

This piece, titled "Selkie & Seal" is so realistic, I keep expecting one of them to move at any second. I had no idea what a selkie was but after seeing this, I had to find out. According to the Encyclopedia Mythica, "the shy Selkies are marine creatures in the shape of a seal. They can be found near the islands of Orkney and Shetland. A female can shed her skin and come ashore as a beautiful woman. When a man finds the skin, he can force the Selkie to be a good, if somewhat sad, wife. Should she ever recover the skin, she will immediately return to sea, leaving her husband behind." I think that would make a great movie!




This wonderful little mouse, inspired by the mice in the movie Cinderella, is sculpted from polymer clay and then covered with fur of some sort. What a cute little guy and so amazingly life-like!


If you've fallen in love with Michelle's work the way I have, then you'll want to watch this incredible slideshow of her artwork set to beautiful, haunting music from Lord of the Rings. Michelle says her goal with her art is to "give her creations spirit and soul." She's definitely accomplished that and so much more with her realistic, breathtaking sculptures.