Regarding her work, the artist says:

Starving For Peace was originally meant to appear as a bleak, famished man without color and without the flowers seen in his hair and beard. I was initially interested in showing the bare bones of human melancholy, highlighting the calm disposition of a man that had lost everything and could gain nothing back. However, I realized that by adding clusters of colorful flowers gave a whole new meaning to the piece by contrasting against the otherwise drab figure. The flowers added a sense of purpose and hope to the figure’s sadness, and that maybe he had not given up entirely but instead was just resting.

Willow Schafer grew up in a rural town in north-eastern Ohio until she and her family moved to Florida where she discovered her love of art after getting involved in an art class. Since then, she’s been working towards several goals such as the publication of artwork, short stories, and novels, as well as obtaining a PhD in forensic science. After traveling around the continental United States with her family and studying in Spain for three months, she found herself inspired by the surreal and the symbolic.