SCARY ART: THE NIGHTMARE
|
SCARY ART - THE NIGHTMARE!!! 18 x 24 inch Screen Prints $30 |
THE NIGHTMARE... |
  |
The NIGHTMARE! A strange cerebral monstrous mutation invades the dream state. The faces, thoughts, fears, screams and desires cross the collective unconscious melting and morphing into a psychedelic web of terror. The nightmare exposes the telepathic collection that hides deep within our minds. The masks peel away revealing an apocalyptic horror, removing the individual and replacing our so called reality with a hideous, amorphous release. Eyes, mouths, limbs, skins and bones stretch and twist into each other like an oozing mess as we slowing drift into the globular otherness and learn to accept the nightmare... I first started exploring this type of imagery a few years ago while making my series of “Surreal Comics”. At that time I had just finished working as a full time street art performer and really wanted to get away from the cityscape, crowd scenes that had dominated my public artworks. Although a lot of my street art depicts insane monsters and a certain degree of cartoon violence there was a deliberate humour and playfulness to the work as it was intended for audiences of all ages. Having returned to the privacy of the studio I suddenly had an urge to relinquish that side of my work and create some more horrific, Lovecraftian and personal artworks. These nightmare shapes appeared in a few of my darker webcomics around 2008-09 before disappearing for a while. It was during a comic convention in the early winter of 2014 that I decided to re-visit these hideous abstractions. I made 4 or 5 smaller versions of the Nightmare while sitting in the artists alley at the Toronto Comic-Con. The drawings were well received by the audience and it felt really cathartic to once again escape the meticulously detailed city scape drawings again to work on something more free and frightening. Following the convention I spent a few days creating the larger version. The full size nightmare was 26 inches x 40 inches and drawn with pen and ink on paper and has been reproduced as an 18 inch x 24 inch screen print. |
SCARY ART -INFLUENCE AND PHOBIA
Although a lot of my artwork appears to be a combination of abstract illustration with alternative and mainstream western comic books my secret real passion has always been weird tales, horror movies and dark manga. However I am not talking about slasher films or your typical monster movies but the really cerebral stuff like David Cronenberg (whose body horror influence is certainly apparent in these works), Kubrick's “The Shining” the world of Shinya Tsukamoto and some Takeshi Miike (when he is Ichi the Killer/Audition/Imprint evil). There are also a number of intense dark manga out there that take the themes and madness of horror to a whole new level. Artists like Suehiro Maruo, Hideo Yamamoto and Junji Ito are highly recommended if your are looking for some scary art. Another big influence on my work is the weird tale, whether it be a Poe or Lovecraft yarn, EC Comics or an episode of the Nightgallery,Kolchak or Tales from the Crypt I can never get enough of scary stories.
 |
RELATED PAGES |
 |