Professor Alaric Westmere



This fictional 19th-century naturalist draws on the visual language of anatomical atlases like The Atlas of Human Anatomy and Surgery, rendering mythological beings as specimens for dissection. His digital illustrations emulate the texture and detachment of cadaver studies, reflecting a worldview rooted in control and classification. By mimicking this clinical aesthetic, I’m examining how scientific authority has historically objectified bodies marked as other—transforming difference into monstrosity under the guise of neutrality.


Rowan Dunn, digital 2024
Rowan Dunn, digital 2024

Rowan Dunn, digital 2024
Rowan Dunn, digital 2024
A distinctive feature of Westmere’s pages is a handwritten script I designed specifically for him—a phonetic writing system inspired by botanical forms like tendrils, seed pods, and branching stems. Though readable to me, it appears cryptic to others, echoing the inaccessibility often built into academic language. The script deepens the worldbuilding while also critiquing how specialized knowledge can be used to gatekeep and exclude.

Rowan Dunn, digital 2025
Rowan Dunn, digital 2024, intial concept