Los Angeles native Mike Stilkey has always been attracted to painting and drawing not only on vintage paper, record covers and book pages, but on the books themselves. Using a mix of ink, colored pencil, paint and lacquer, Stilkey depicts a melancholic and at times a whimsical cast of characters inhabiting ambiguous spaces and narratives of fantasy and fairy tales. A lingering sense of loss and longing hints at emotional depth and draws the viewer into their introspective thrall with a mixture of capricious poetry, wit, and mystery. (Photo by Mike Stilkey)

Weighing 1,500lb, Brutus the great white shark lunges at some bait off Guadalupe Island, Mexico in July 2022. (Photo by Euan Rannachan/Media Drum Images/The Times)

Laura Ford’s 1991 sculpture Twiglet has been installed at Thirsk Hall Sculpture Garden, North Yorkshire, UK in the last decade of April 2024. (Photo by James Glossop/The Times)

Men wear masks as they sit in the metro in Prague, Czech Republic, 17 March 2020. According to media reports, the Czech government decided to impose a two-week quarantine in the country on the evening of 15 March, and ban all international travel from 16 March 2020. Currently 383 cases of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the Covid-19 disease, have been officially confirmed in Czech Republic. (Photo by Martin Divisek/EPA/EFE)

Actress Demi Moore attends Irving “Swifty” Lazar's Oscar Party hosted at Spago on March 29, 1989 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by Jim Smeal/WireImage)

A column of sand and front of clouds are seen by dash cam as the car drives near a tornado in Dragalina, Calarasi county, Romania April 30, 2019 in this still image taken from a video obtained from social media. (Photo by Alexandra Puscasu via Reuters)

Participants attend the annual May bank holiday “Jack In The Green” parade and festival in Hastings, Britain, May 6, 2019. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)

The 29-year-old English actress Kimberley Garner is seen in Cannes, France on May 20, 2019. (Photo by The Mega Agency)