FANTASY THAT INFORMS
FANTASY THAT INFORMS
If it jiggles, moves quickly, surprises, shocks, angers, saddens, worries, amuses - it’s there, endless scrolling trails of it, all vying for your attention with the real world.
People are suffering the brain version of diabetes from consuming all of this empty media. Whether this is doom scrolling or falling into the vats of mildly amusing nonsense, it is all contributing to an emptiness.
Creating the empty calories of escapism is easy. The myriad ways we can be distracted from the mundanity of life are overly familiar to everyone, now more than ever.
People understand that they are being kept physically unhealthy in order to have them be dependent on the industries that have developed around that, it’s exactly the same for your mind.
We have a harder time seeing when our brains are clouded, because our brains are what we use to perceive the world. However, perception is not reality, it’s just perception, anyone who has hallucinated knows this well (I have brain damage, I should know.).
I decided that I wanted to be an artist when I was 8 & my teacher showed me little biographies & retrospectives of Degas & Pollock. It took me decades to figure out what that meant & how to make it work.
Being an artist in my lifetime in America looked very different than every artist that I admired growing up. Even the artists in Juxtapoz who were a little older than me were using structures that no longer worked unless they let you into their club.
In finding my own path I had to develop a lot of momentum. If I was going to be successful on my own terms, while I was still alive, I would have to work my ass off. I did, I worked myself into a stroke.
In 2007, I realized that I wanted to do illustrations for roleplaying games. I was contacted by Daniel Proctor from Labyrinth Lord & started to draw for him. Much later I ran an interview with the artist Skinner in PORK magazine, that inspired me to get out of the Weirdo Art ghetto I’d worked myself into & just let loose with what I’m into.
I gave myself the pass to create fantasy after working for most of my life on projects that brought art into life. That is, to bring about social transformation by integrating the possibility of art into life.
What is this transformation? I’m pushing for a deeper understanding of the complexity of humanity. Nothing too sinister. It’s weird being associated with negative tropes & having such an overtly PBS intention.
Over the years I have learned to do good without being obvious. I find that the motivation to be recognized for doing good is usually matched with the inherently immoral wants of our society. That is, I don’t think society can actually do good, I think it can be run better, but by its nature it is inherently a realm of extreme compromises.
Even as my work has veered into the more anti-social side of life it still “feels good.” Even as I haven’t been able to booze it up or indulge at all, I still put my works into that field.
I was initially drawn to fantasy because I was so bored by the real world. Especially as a child, I found things almost unbearably dreary. Armies of Goblins, Trolls in misty mountains, skeletons with swords, Dragons guarding hordes of treasure, Wizards toying with the fabric of the universe struck something deep inside of me.
I knew these things were possible in some form, but the world in front of me was so buttoned down & controlled. There was a lot more to life & this bland, repetitive existence that people settled. It was just the most boring of many options.
By allowing myself into this fantasy I’d been denying myself, I felt that it is my task to imbue it with something you can bring back into the real world that will help you in some way. I like old things, but I don’t want to have the nostalgia get in the way of making things for the now, for tomorrow.
Creating worlds out of the raw ingredients of history, philosophy, biology, anthropology & whatever books I dig into to further my education is part of the job for me. This is the same as a chef going out of their way to find excellent ingredients to cook with.
I have to make the things seem cool & they have to resonate with people, but I’m looking for something that will also help them grow as people, to see the other as not so other. This is my attempt at repairing the world, even if my work is cloaked in anti-social trappings, those are just disguises to allow my work into places where it wouldn’t be able to go otherwise.