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I've never seen a medium affect people more than comic books.
You'll do anything for them.
It's like being really, really in love. But with someone who can be totally mean to you sometimes!
And you're like "Ah, what can I do? I'm in love".
At one point I was thinking how can I get a bed in here?
You know, so I can just sleep and then get up and work.
If you're at that point, that's not healthy.
That's not healthy. You need to go out of a place.
Pretty much from the moment I could walk or talk I was drawing.
And my dad was very encouraging of that.
And my mother as well but my dad being an artist, if I wanted a dress or toys or anything like that he'd sort of just vague-out.
But if it was anything artistic he'd buy it for me in a second.
So I really had that installed in me.
Yeah it can get pretty obsessive.
Just trying to get things right.
Is that the most dynamic angle? Is that conveying the story enough?
Have I weighted my page properly?
You just obsess, obsess, obsess.
You can really question your mental state.
As someone was saying to me, if I got signed to a big label in comics then I'd have to assume that I'd have a Comic Book Widow husband.
And I was like "What? Why?"
And they said that's what happens to everyone. They're called the Comic Book Widows.
They just never see you ever again. You go into a studio hole and never come out.
I like to be a bit more expressive.
So I think if I'm thinking too much about it then I'm going to lose the magic.
I like to have a lot of it just flow out of me.
My paintings are a lot more expressive and they're a chance for me to not feel so bound up.
I've got a lot of things that I want to express so I kind of use my paintings for that.
Right now the comic that I'm working on is a submission that was requested by "2000 AD" an English Publication.
The whole reason I got into comics is this publication.
They sent me a script and told me to go for it. So I penciled it and now I'm inking it.
It's called Tilguth and it was really hard.
Really, really hard.
I thought I was going to go nuts on this one.
I ruined myself doing this stuff. I screwed up my shoulder, I lost sleep.
So at least I know I put in everything that I had when I did it.
So I can say "I did that to my full potential".
Essentially I don't really feel as though the art world knows where to put comics right now.
Generally it's a subsector of galleries that accept street art, low brow art.
I mean I kind of get put in the urban, contemporary, street art, low brow art category.
So I tend to go to galleries that show art of that caliber normally.
But there aren't a lot of comic artists that do have shows like that.
Painting is a great release for comic artists.
It's a way to express ourselves in a different way without having to tell an entire story.
We can tell one story in one picture with just a couple of characters.
It's quite a desired medium for expression for comic artists.
This is my dealer gallery Eyeball Kicks. It's a boutique shop that shows popular culture art and urban contemporary art.
These are 2 of the last paintings I did
entitled The Devil's Henchmen and Lucid.
They're 2 of my characters that I came up with loosely just for one shot comics.
I started drawing up these characters, sort of loosely inspired by the cartoon Pinky and the Brain.
Like the really intelligent, cynical mastermind and the thuggish, stupid guy.
Then they just sort of developed into these characters that were called the Devil's Angels originally (now the Devil's Henchmen).
Then I started going off into a sub-concept about them working in what is hell, but is actually a government building.
But they have to go through a massive process to get promoted to something like data entry.
So those characters sort of developed into that story.
Even places that have nothing to do with popular culture art or anything like that, I like to visit to get stimulated by them;
contemporary galleries just to get that different part of your brain working.
Because you can get stuck in an artistic rut of the same neural pathways,
and you never actually create anything original because you get stuck in that artistic loop.
I go to the library and the resource areas as well and just open books and look, it's like feeding your files for images.
So that when you go to paint, you've got this file of imagery just flicking over.
So the resource section in the Wellington library is amazing.
It's fantastic and I go there a lot.
I think a lot of the time I write about how I'm feeling at that time.
And in a way, what I want to happen but it isn't happening, or what is really happening inside of me.
So a lot of the time it is a way for me to communicate how I'm feeling.
And I'll create a character to reflect that time.
Just even for a moment. It might even just be the essence of a character and it just transforms into its own life.
This is the comic that Simon and I have been working on:
this project, Tomoe that we're pitching to heavy metal comics
it's a comic based on a girl going through her personal challenges of her subconscious and her inner demons as she's meditating.
And she's realizing that she needs to release herself from holding on to reality
and just fall, and allow herself to be consumed in order for her to work through them.
It's not auto bio but it's about the human condition. We're all a part of the human condition, so in a way it is auto bio.
But it's definitely more about each individual person's own mountain they have to climb.
Whether that's to do with their past, or to do with their ego, or to do with their insecurities,
we've all got that mountain that we've got to climb, that cobra we've got to look in the eyes.
Yeah.