Whether tinkering in the studio or making grand gestures out on the street, this young American artist uses deft characterisation and fluidity of line to explore the darker side of the psyche.
What's hanging on your walls?
Fliers from shows, art from friends, tiny glowing things, Day of the Dead tapestries, pictures of people I don't know, christmas ornaments, a taxidermied pink yeti head, doodles from college, pirate dreamcatchers, masks, animal skulls, a picture of me tied to a butcher table with saran-wrap from last halloween, paint samples…and sometimes I just paint directly onto my walls.
When did you start drawing...what's your earliest memory of making art?
I have no memory of a time like that. My grandma recently showed me a drawing I did of Buzz Lightyear on a napkin when I was six. I wrote "Buss" and "To infinidy and beyond”, then signed my name backwards. It's a pretty rad drawing.
What's the importance of keeping a sketchbook handy? How do you decide whether to take an idea further and how does it advance from first draught to finished piece?
Keeping a sketchbook handy doesn't mean anything..you might look cool..but you have to use it every day to make it count. You have to be kind of a hermit, or just a weirdo. It's like speaking a language – you have to doodle all the time to stay in touch with your hands, with where your pen was when you left off, where your mind was. Some of my best work is just sketchbook drivel – pure and unmediated. When I feel empty-headed in planning for a big piece I sometimes go back to my old sketchbooks, pick something and work it out. There's not a huge number of steps between sketchbook and finished piece. Sometimes I just sketch straight onto the nice paper, using my sketchbook as reference, making edits on the fly, and then I ink and colour it. Sometimes if you put a piece through too many steps it can get really stiff. I like to stay close to the source.
What non-visual sources inspire you?
I majored in english so language inspires me intensely. Poets like Roethke, Plath, James Merrill, E.E. Cummings. Writers who just rip universes into existence with small quick descriptions – Cormac McCarthy, Hemingway, Nabokov. I like instrumental/ambient music – Aphex Twin, Ratatat, Explosions in the Sky, and then music that creates wicked florid narrative histories, like The Flaming Lips. I am inspired by the sensation of discomfort, and the kinds of psychological states that we don't have any words to describe – those are the feelings I try to express through drawing. Pain, misgivings, awkwardness, insanity, loss, and a very particular kind of human ache. And then I throw in bright colours to make those feelings look fun.
Do you think of the figures in your images as characters? Do they ever have a life in your imagination beyond the specific art work? Are any recurrent?
Yes, many of them do. I had this one character named Meat Juice who kept showing up in my work, and Meat Juice was there to represent good-bad, you know what I mean? I try to explore the lives of the people and things that surface in my work because I think art has a responsibility to tell a story. I would love to animate a movie someday, and I plan to. I think Meat Juice will end up in there.
What are the differences in creative process between making a large scale work for the wall compared to a paper-based illustration?
Painting walls is totally different, and in some ways the same. Using spray paint, for one, requires a different set of skills and focus. I'm still learning. You can't get in those tiny noodley details you can with a brush pen – well, you can, but you have to get there in a totally different way. Painting a wall is kind of like being in the coliseum with a lion, you have to stay on top of it, you have to respect it and wrestle it down at the same time. It takes endurance, planning and sweat in a way that drawing doesn't. And you get to travel, be out on the street, meet people, hear what they think – you feel more like a human than a robot tinkering in a studio. That's why I love it.
What’s been the best and worst reactions to your work?
Hmm. This old Chinese dude came by when I was painting a mural recently and told me that if he hadn't missed his bus he would never have seen me painting, and that he felt like fate had brought him there. Then he painted the characters for "Horse Dragon" on a piece of paper and gave it to me.
Worst reaction? I'm not sure. No one has ever told me outright that they hate my art, although I feel like that would be helpful for me, because you can never get a proper critique from someone who likes your stuff. The worst reaction is no reaction.. if you feel like your art has made no impact whatsoever. A lot of people will look at art and have absolutely nothing to say. That's when you go back to the studio.
Tell us about a favourite recent project.
I got to make a comic book for The Flaming Lips. Drawing has never been so much fun.
If you could spend one minute with one person that has had an influence on your work, who would they be and what would you ask them?
Hieronymus Bosch and I would be like "I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD”…seriously though one minute is such a tease.
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