No school, no bars no restaurants, no kidding. We are all in cages now. But thank goodness our cages have comfortable furniture, restrooms and internet to keep us busy. Maybe it’s time to think about compelling artist Lisa Ericson and what her dramatic paintings appear to be missing.

Hyperrealistic Paintings of Migrating Animals Carrying Tiny Ecosystems on Their Backs

Combining her hyperrealistic style with her vivid imagination, Portland-based artist Lisa Ericson creates surreal, nature-inspired animal paintings. Each colorful acrylic-on-panel artwork from her Border Crossing series depicts fantastical combinations of plants and animals, all of which seem to be traveling on epic journeys to unknown lands.

From turtles carrying mini mobile habitats on their shells to small mammals, birds, and reptiles hitching a ride on the backs of swimming pelicans, each scene is like a tiny version of “Noah’s Ark.” Erikson’s work merges themes of animal migration in the wild with human migration and the refugee crisis. In one piece, titled Into the Dark, a mother lemur perches on a white pelican while her babies cling to her. “I made Into the Dark in response to the horror of the policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S. border,” Ericson reveals. “Often when I work, I get lost in the technical aspects of painting—the color, seeing the image take shape brushstroke by brushstroke—but this subject matter was a little raw for me and I felt emotional about it all the way through.”

Beautiful in every detail. But call me crazy, but when I think of an animal that carries his ecosystem on his back there is one particular mammal that springs to mind, isn’t a pelican or turtle.

With black backgrounds, each stunning painting is packed full of minute details, reminiscent of the realist still life paintings of the Dutch Masters. Ericson’s use of acrylic paint is jaw-droppingly precise, capturing each creature’s soft fur, reptilian scales, and quill-like feathers with a myriad of tiny brushstrokes.

Now I You can see even more of Ericson’s work on her website and Instagram.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Beavers don’t “migrate” so much as disperse. But maybe they migrate exactly as much as humans do and for the very same reasons. Our beavers ‘migrated’ eventually.  Mary and Joseph migrated. When they’re displaced, or their homeland becomes unsafe. They will leave to find a new home. And they carry so many species with them.

Lisa gets an email suggesting this.Meanwhile we’re all migrant families in cages now. So settle in and get used to it.