You've captured the 'beauty' part well enough, but I'm not convinced by the 'expansive ugly'. It's creepy, certainly, but not so unappealing as to offset the butterfly.

It's also not very expansive. The tree creature sits alone with the butterfly, each of them having almost equal weight and impact in the image. Given that, a change of title or artist's comment could easily change the perception of the piece as a whole. Say this piece is about star crossed romance and it's almost more believable. But place these two within a vast, desolate forest of identical spider-like tree creatures and I think your goal would be achieved.

Hey dan!

As usual you have created inspiring work, and i find it hard to offer meaningful crit but i will endeavor to do so! To begin i really like how you have handled the beam of light and the hard cast shadows dropped by the butterfly!

For suggestions i feel the foreground element that is out of focus and the "claw things" in the BG should be swapped tonally IMHO. The close ones side is facing away from the light, and the far ones are not they should be picking up traces of that purplish light. finally, since it seems like that is the only source of light, pushing the shadows darker around the eye directly below the light will kick up the impression of that being an underside with the added bonus of bringing that eye out and maybe even increasing its malevolence.

probably these are being nitpicky, by and large its a wonderfully successful piece i just feel these things might push the sense of forbidding and darkness!