Stuart Shadwell is an illustrator based in St. Louis, Missouri. While his artwork is not limited to a single theme, he often draws inspiration from growing up surrounded by woods and farmland outside of Springfield, Missouri and watching horror and action movies from a young age. Many of his works express the dichotomy of wonder mixed with the terror and repulsion of raw nature. Folklore comes to express both the seeming kindness and brutality of the wild. This feature represents a kind of liminal space or threshold which humans find themselves draw to in various forms.