"Why don't you draw little pink hearts in the eyes?"
My response was that I don't do happy artwork. Nevermind that the art being created was in celebration of Justin and Susie's just complete vows. They had the idea that they wanted to have all of the party goers create a piece of art to commemorate the occasion. Being the movie nerds that Justin and Susie are, they had the great idea (with some assistance from Justin's brother) of creating spoof movie posters as keepsakes for attendees. One of the posters was Friday the 3rd. In keeping with that theme, I decided to do my own variant of that, doing a 3 color painting of a goalie mask (a la Friday the 13th). The colors were contrasting, a muted yellowish brown for the base color, crimson for the v design on the forehead of the mask and black to force a feel of lighting and frame the picture. As I was finishing, the pink hearts question was asked of me and I provided my response. The thing is, I don't know why I don't do happy art.
Maybe it's my love of contrast. I REALLY dig light and shadow and how they interact. I like moody art. I like graphic art. Scary art. My theory on art is kind of like my theory on movies. I like the rush that a good scary movie can bring you. The rush of adrenaline pumping when a movie has sufficiently scared the shit out of you. I want my art to create the same sort of impact and feeling. Takashi Miike is able to do put images on film hat are incredibly disturbing, yet they are very hard to look away from. Tarantino is also adept at bringing his point home through visuals as well as words (see the Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves portion of Kill Bill vol. 1 or the animated O-Ren Ishii segment for examples that really strike me).
Some of my favorite artists have been able to do this in one way or another for me at some point. Of course Frazetta is in there with his seminal depictions of Conan the Cimmerian. Along with Frazetta is his modern day counterpart Cary Nord who I think has done a great job of capturing a lot of the older feel while modernizing the techniques and approach to Conan. Johnny Craig is another one of my favorite artists (along with the whole stable of EC talent frankly), with his work from EC Comics in the 50's breaking a lot of boundaries and bringing a new level of detail and graphic depiction to artwork. Some others I would like to mention without belaboring the point are Wrightson, Geiger and Jim Lee.
I guess I still don't have a sufficient explanation for why I create what I do. Maybe it's my way of coping with my darker side in a healthy way without lashing out. Maybe I'm just demented. I don't know. Let me know what you think.
