I often wonder if people who are Christians might struggle with the weird creatures I love to design. They might wonder what kind of Christian would create monsters. So let me start there, they’re not monsters, they are creatures. My earliest influences in art were people like Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, Stanley Mouse, Von Dutch, Roach and others who have been labeled as low brow artists by some. Their work is cartoony and heavily influenced by custom car culture. This is some of the earliest stuff I can remember looking at that made me think I wanted to be an artist. I still really like it. I don’t consider them to be monsters for the most part. There is just something liberating about creating something that does not exist anywhere but in my imagination.
Secondly and most importantly, I like creating creatures because they are not human. For example, one day I created a cartoon, which I thought was hilarious. I started to think about vegetarians who are called that because they eat primarily a plant based diet. Then my imagination took over and before long I had a gag line. If vegetarians eat only vegetables, should we be afraid of humanitarians? I drew a very stereotypical cannibal as the illustration. I thought it was hilarious and it came out very well. I posted the cartoon. Not long after, a dear friend of mine who happens to be African American took me aside and after affirming the fact that he knew I meant no offense, he informed me of how hurtful those images can be to some people in the African American community. I loved that he did that for me. I had a blind spot and saw nothing but a funny joke. He helped me and I took the cartoon down out of respect. I never intend to be deliberately offensive, but there is a problem here. It is hard to draw people in this day and age without someone taking offense, even if that was not my intent. For me creatures solve this problem. Because my creatures look like no one, they can speak to everyone. These are the reasons I do creatures, plus, I have to tell you the truth, as stated earlier…
They’re fun!
AMOKArts 