posted: May 13, 2013

These drawings were commissioned by… no one!
In that hour between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m. something has to gel. I create an environment out of some abstract drips and scrawls. Then I add a figure or two and you get some sort of drama going. Sometimes, even stasis is all the drama I can handle at 5:00 a.m. Sometimes the whole thing gets out of hand, searching for a solution and I paint it all out and start over.
But, I swear, I'll go to bed tonight happily anticipating the morning hours in a sleeping house when I work on myself and, myself and that mysterious thing called Art.

posted: April 18, 2013

It's been entertaining and edifying to read others' lists of influences. I hope that my indulgent speculation kindles positive reflections in you and the knowledge that we stand on the shoulders of so many others. And, that they are not so different than us.
I grew up reading my older brothers' comic books and Mad Magazines. I watched afternoon monster and war movies. And I was always drawing and these things were my early influences. Art has been a talent. I always stood out in grammar school and high school. I was  a good student and tried all Art materials and styles. I hung out with smart kids and art kids. I was one of the art stars. It may have been my 18th birthday; my stepsister gave me this book (I don't know what possessed her but it has always been a a touchstone):

But I went to art school. I didn't study illustration at all and never considered it a future job. I think my education, in retrospect, was scattershot which might reflect the time: the late 70's and early 80's. I studied fine art: painting, printmaking, sculpture. Presumably, options and a lifestyle would flow from this preoccupation. I worked college jobs designing posters, ads and editorial cartoons for the student newspapers (I'd also done this in high school). I was inspired by Mort Drucker, Bill Mauldin, Thomas Oliphant, Ranan Lurie, Thomas Nast, Rembrandt etchings. One-color offset reproduction maybe with color overlays done in rubylith… this was my graphic universe.
I wondered if Milton Glaser rubbed down his own Letraset type. I was clueless about graphic design, illustration and fine art. What's sort of funny to me is that in addition to Artforum magazine and fine art coffee table books and monographs, I would prowl the university library and check out old Graphis Annuals too.
So, I feel like I've had several "careers" with their attendant influences; …any more than 15! And since it's been a week or so since Yuko issued the challenge, my list has blossomed out of control to where I feel like a cloud and I wonder where the influences end and the self becomes defined. And I wonder also, who's wagging whom? Which is the tail and which is the dog? Should I add things to my list that make me look sophisticated or add idols that confirm something that I've sought in myself? …See, I'm a mess …!
But I want to leave you a list. It seems very slippery however. Some are role models for me, Some are etched in my visual memory. Some influence in a negative sort of way--I go in the opposite direction. Some I simply love and are part of my ever-growing artistic bouquet. They illuminate values that go to the core of what it means to make Art: to be fearless, to be curious, to provoke and to soothe. Some influences are laborers in the same vineyard, just a little further ahead of where I am and where I hope to arrive someday:

So many more great images…

posted: April 10, 2013

I read an interview with Ryan O'Rourke yesterday. He's a children's book illustrator — among other things. He mentioned that working on children's books is akin to running a marathon and that doing editorial illustration is more like a sprint. I would agree. I'm currently working on two picture books and I only have a lot of sketches, tests, and jabs 'n stabs on the cutting room floor. Some days it's like having a sword fight or a game of tag with an invisible friend at the bottom of a swimming pool of molasses. I head over to a coffee shop to sneak up on myself and hammer out a new outline and thumbnails but soon enough, I have to confront the molasses of doubt again as I hopefully catch a glimpses of the faraway finish line. This is my life right now.
Regardless, my inclination and extensive training in fine arts (BA painting & printmaking, MFA sculpture) compel me to make Art as constantly as I can (currently in a series of sketchbooks). I really believe that the resulting accretion of images will someday amount to an artistic life lived without too many apologies. So, while Illustration right now seems to require wandering into the lairs of personal demons and even procrastinating with well-intentioned diversions, the payoff (of sorts) is that my anxiety and doubt breed the egotistic introspection to make Art that I can live with (and others may find interesting or inspiring some day). And it occurs to me, in looking at a few items from the past month, that this personal work (examples below) looks like children's book Illustration – with a dash of editorial illustration thrown on top. I guess it stands to reason. Onward then!
PS: in this time of year with so many transitions for those dear to us, consider for whom the bell tolls and be grateful for the freedom you have to make Art (and even blog about it) --I think this is just about the ultimate form of liberty one can manage in the fog of our relative comfort.

posted: March 22, 2013

Many of you are familiar with the illustrations of Lisbon's own  ANDRE CARRILHO. I've seen his caricatures in the New Yorker for the past several years. I enjoy the distortion of his figures and the way he blends standard practices of caricature (imagine a ménage à quatre between Ralph Steadman, Al Hirschfeld, Steve Brodner and Kristen Ulve) with a cool/hot helping of digital playfulness. I personally think he may be withholding his full talent or I just haven't seen enough of his work to think that this represents his full potential. However, I'm sure, in the realm of commissioned illustration, Mr. Carrilho has surprises in store yet to come.
The portrait to the left is of Billy Holiday.
Recently, when prowling flickr I was immediately attracted to these pen and brush drawings of the rooftops, also of Lisbon. What's the connection? They were done by André Carrilho.

Besides being a digital figurative illustrator, André Carrilho is also part of a worldwide semi-organized group of artists who practice "urban sketching." Moleskine notebooks in hand, they blog their work as groups and post on flickr and probably many other places. Artists organize "crawls" in different cities and do the time-honored artist practice of sketching and taking note of what's in front of their noses (and then follow this with socializing and more sketching).
Why? In André's own words: (from his flickr profile)

"I'm a professional illustrator that decided to go back to basics and try to draw without a "undo" button.

Here you'll find a selection of sketches that are:
• done mostly on location. They may be finished by memory, if the circumstances demand it, but I'll avoid as much as I can using photos as reference.
• done with techniques that make corrections or erasing difficult (ink, watercolor). What you see is what I first drew. I can add, but I can't take back."

If you go to Carrilho's flickr blog, you see that he adds work to it daily. There's just a steady stream of  images done in all manner of places: bars, concerts in the evening, city plazas and construction sites by day. There are older beautiful watercolors of exotic ports of call and rich and gritty ink drawings of the taverns before the fado singers show up. I've never been to Lisbon but this is how I imagine it somehow: posing and elusive, proud but with dirt under the fingernails. Somewhere, an old train lumbers along doing something essential yet somehow toy-like all the same.
Fernando Pessoa, arguably Portugal's poet laureate, touches on Lisbon's sultry yet acerbic gravitation and maybe hints at the way artists like André Carrilho can seamlessly pour forth work that spans obvious dichotomies:

“It is sometimes said that the four greatest Portuguese poets of modern times are Fernando Pessoa. The statement is possible since Pessoa, whose name means ‘person’ in Portuguese, had three alter egos who wrote in styles completely different from his own. In fact Pessoa wrote under dozens of names, but Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos were – their creator claimed – full-fledged individuals who wrote things that he himself would never or could never write. He dubbed them ‘heteronyms’ rather than pseudonyms, since they were not false names but “other names”, belonging to distinct literary personalities. Not only were their styles different; they thought differently, they had different religious and political views, different aesthetic sensibilities, different social temperaments. And each produced a large body of poetry. Álvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis also signed dozens of pages of prose.”  —from Goodreads