Welcome to my inspirations page.
This is where I can babble incandescently about artists I like whoo hoo! The first artist I remember liking was at high school, and as we were at the stage of just being shown classical painters and asked to copy them, I chose Cezanne. He was to show me how well colour could be used, but it took me years to properly understand. In fact the first painting I ever did was a copy of a bowl of Cezanne’s famous apples.
At college I loved Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon, both radically different but both legends! Freud has this style, which has always been a heavy influence. He showed me that paint can be used to sculpt on the page, and introduced me to texture, and also following contours of an object with the brush to give it more solidarity.
Bacon had a great imagination. Very dark, very daring very troubled. Loved his fleshy combinations of purples and reds, and his ‘portrait’ of the pope is a haunting image. I always remember Tim Burton’s tribute to him in Batman where the Joker destroys many valuable paintings, but leaves Bacon’s on the wall, as he ‘likes his style’.
When I started at Leeds Art College, I was introduced to the happy world of comic books. Step up Roman Dirge, Johen Vasquez, and quite possibly everyone at slave labour graphics. These artists were making simple little storybooks, but all were very cool, very dark, very Tim Burton. I know everyone seems to like these guys, but they are amazing, I never thought books could be so dark! I thought ‘I can do this!’ and so I slipped down a different leg in the trousers of time to become an illustrator…
At University, Edward Gorey, F.C.Ware (Jimmy Corrigan), Gerald Scarfe, and Paul Kidby were probably most inspiring. Edward Gorey had again very dark very gothic very much like slave labour graphics which I liked. F.C.Ware and his huge Jimmy Corrigan graphic novel made me realise how hard some people work to get publisher, and so motivated me.
Gerald Scarfe was inspiring but depressing in equal amounts. This man has an intricate mental map of the human body. He can draw anything in the world he wants from memory, in his angry style. He serves his own political goals trough his work, which must be satisfying, and I want a copy of his sculpture of ‘The Racist’, which shows the dark side of the man in the street, on my mantelpiece!
Paul Kidby illustrates the Discworld Books, and had a great mix of realism and humour that brings the Discworld to life. One of these illustrators your always proud to hear are British.
At the moment, I have moved away from my previous dark style, as I would like to move more into kids books and editorial work.