The momentary beauty of Sage Vaughn's butterflies is palpable. These impossibly lovely, delicate creatures appear to have magically landed or violently crashed, oozing their colorful pigment like blood-stained marks across the canvas. The dichotomy of these delicate and ephemeral creatures co-existing over images of gritty urban life creates a contrast that is layered, mysterious, and up for interpretation.

Vaughn's butterflies appear as choreographed nature-their drips echoing his early beginnings as a graffiti artist. Sometimes juxtaposed against the likes of mundane interiors, forests, or the Russian punk band Pussy Riot, Vaughn's distinctive paintings create provocative relationships between the built and natural environment. The effect is dreamlike and almost hypnotic, as swarms of butterflies concurrently live and die in graceful formations that are at once heart-breakingly beautiful and sublimely melancholy.

Sage Vaughn is an LA-based painter and illustrator who is best recognized for his wildlife s