Selena Swinkels builds her animal sculptures from an unconventional starting point: salvaged and leftover wood pulled from demolition sites. Each piece is assembled from multiple fragments of this reclaimed material, then leveled and smoothed with a modeling compound before it takes on any recognizable form. The Dutch artist works from photographs of real animals, translating fennec foxes, lemurs, cats, and dogs into carved bodies that retain the exaggerated proportions and theatrical poses associated with Mexican alebrije carving, oversized ears, arched spines, and tails that curl into near-perfect spirals, while remaining entirely her own invention rather than a direct copy of that tradition.
The transformation happens almost entirely in the paint. Swinkels applies dense fields of pattern, polka dots, checkerboards, and hard-edged stripes, in saturated color combinations that override the animals’ natural coloring, turning a lemur cobalt blue or a fennec fox a mix of orange, pink, and dark brown. High-quality acrylic paint is finished with a gloss or silk varnish, giving each surface a lacquered, almost ceramic sheen despite the wood construction underneath. The result sits at the intersection of craft and sculpture: functional recycled material reshaped into decorative objects, each one unique, hand-signed, and issued with a certificate of authenticity.
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in Bahia.