The Ghostly Store Blog.

A child of scenic Virginia, Langdon Graves first learned the basics of illustration from her grandfather. She went on to earn an MFA from Parsons in New York City, where she currently lives. Langdon’s painterly drawings aim to dissect and reconstruct the human body with fragments of bone, tissue, metaphor, and belief as an exploration of how differently science and religion seek to explain natural phenomena and the origins of human life.

Langdon’s series of exclusive prints for The Ghostly Store explore the theories and diagrams of Rene Descartes. At the core of Descartes’ philosophy is his belief that mental events belong to an immaterial substance he called “Res Cogitans” (or “thinking thing”, above), while “Res Extensa” (or “corporeal substance”, below) extends into space and matter. Langdon draws from these ideas for her handmade images, incorporating Descartes’ search for philosophical truths with a delicate sense of composition and color.

For instance, “Francine the Machine” (top) is named after Descartes’ illegitimate daughter, who died of scarlet fever at the age of five. There is a legend that haunts Descartes’ legacy, the authenticity of which remains a mystery, surrounding a doll-like automaton built to resemble his deceased daughter. Langdon translates this story into a piece which presents Francine in two ways: as a cognitive being and as pure substance.