I knew this looked familiar!! The cover artwork for Mechademia 2 anthology (series editor: Frenchy Lunning, U Minnesota) is Japanese Apricot 2 by Chiho Aoshima, who was one of the featured artists in the contemporary female japanese art collection drop dead cute, which I posted about earlier.

it’s actually very interesting – her works featured in drop dead cute simultaneously give off a pastel, computer-tone (solid) aesthetic which mixes contemporary and historical imagery as well as elements of environmental and sexual beauty, playing all of these elements off against strongly macabre elements ( I mean, just read the first few paragraphs of the excerpt posted above).

A close up reproduction of the print from the anthology:

a couple other works (I’m too lazy to get the names now, I’ll edit them in later though). I actually didn’t take a picture of some of the more striking and unsettling works, but I suggest looking up the author, you should be able to easily find images of such works. I particularly like the forest one below, with it’s layered foreground/background and lush foliage.