Traders try to control a camel at Pushkar Fair where animals, mainly camels, are brought to be sold and traded in the desert Indian state of Rajasthan November 6, 2016. (Photo by Himanshu Sharma/Reuters)

A jockey drives a buffalo in the annual water buffalo race, part of a week-long festival in homage to the animals and in celebration of the rice harvest in Chonburi, Thailand on April 1, 2016. (Photo by Vichaya Pop/Barcroft Media)

People remove meat from the bones of animals slaughtered for Eid al-Adha after they have been discarded at a garbage dump in Yangon, Myanmar, September 25, 2015. (Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

Forest guards chase away a rhino that strayed into a residential area after floods forced animals to escape the Kaziranga National park in Nagaon district, in the northeastern state of Assam, August 15, 2017. (Photo by Anuwar Hazarika/Reuters)

A woman holds her dog to be blessed outside St. Anton Church to mark St. Anton Day, Animal patron saint, in downtown Madrid, Spain, 17 Jan​uary 2022. (Photo by David Fernandez/EPA/EFE)

An animal sprints across a road as the Sugar Fire, part of the Beckwourth Complex Fire, burns in Plumas National Forest, Calif., on Thursday, July 8, 2021. (Photo by Noah Berger/AP Photo)

Artists perform during the 137th Nice Carnival parade in Nice, southeastern France, on February 19, 2022. The Carnival takes place until February 27, 2022 on the theme “King of animals”. (Photo by Valery Hache/AFP Photo)

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)