Interested in investigating the space between nature and culture, Schafer draws upon her professional experience in scientific illustration to create biologically plausible centaurs and ape-like warrioresses --- conflating mythology and the natural sciences to create a perverse and compelling fantasy space. Her characters emerge from an amalgam of classical and personal mythos, half-truths and re-combinations --- huntresses and the hunted, predators and prey, that tender obsession that ultimately culminates in the taking of a life. The many species in this imagined world engage in endless competition for human status: one having a more human face, the next bipedal, but animal-like, a third fashionably decorating herself with feathers and gold.

Schafer’s current work focuses on Mammalia, representing the functions of the warm-blooded body in an unconventionally sexualized way. Her non-traditional beauties eschew the contemporary idea of "hotness," reveling in a disturbing dialog between the frightening and the erotic.

Stylistically, descriptive detail and flattened space alternate, causing a fluctuation of presence: from the real to the psychological. Detailed study of animal anatomies and behavioral patterns inform Schafer's quasi-pre-historical narratives, creating a dramatic record of desire and aggression.