You’ve previously said, “I feel like it would be better for the world if we could all be more encouraging to our inner artists.” How do you go about encouraging your inner artist?

That is a very loving way to talk about artwork. I can embrace that sometimes, and it’s very difficult other times. Embracing or encouraging your inner artist is difficult sometimes. I think that probably the best way to do it is to just make a space for yourself, time-wise, to sit, or stand, or however you make art, and just have that be your goal—and hopefully, something happens. But encouraging it or letting it blossom, however you want to say it, just making time if you can, if you have the time. For me, the process is very much letting things work their way out of me. It’s not so much I sit down with an idea and I’m like, “You know what? I would really love to encourage this aspect.” It’s like I sit down and I find myself drawing something, so making the time allows that subconscious aspect to work maybe through me.

Your work has been described as “mystical,” “grotesque,” and “primal” portraits of the “strange.” What led you to want to emphasize these aspects of life?

I like the “description of my work has been described” as those things. I described it as those things. I’m going to be totally honest, writing an artist’s bio is one of the worst things that any artist has to do. It always feels like you’re lying. It always feels like you’re making this up for someone else, and you have to sit with it for a sec. Hopefully, you dig deep and you find something that feels true, but those words are inadequate to describe the work. They’re always going to be inadequate. I’m making visual images that are supposed to speak for themselves so that’s more of maybe an introduction, some words that might intrigue people if they end up visiting my site or whatever and seeing that as a description. I forgot the question, but I focused on that part specifically.

Thinking about you putting that initial statement together, what led you to want to emphasize those aspects of life? What drew you to that wanting to emphasize the grotesque nature, wanting to emphasize the primal nature? What made those three things stand out initially?

I think the primal nature is what I was talking about earlier, where it comes from the subconscious. I mean, the primal aspect is the cave painting thing, where it’s like you’ve made an image, you’re not entirely sure why you made it, but it felt vital and it felt like you needed to depict something. They’re more nuanced than cave paintings, but it still comes from the same initial inspiration, maybe, which is something that’s beyond you that drives you to make a thing like that. Why put those on a wall? It just felt like it had to be done, depicting the human experience. That’s maybe the primal. The grotesque is the viewing of my work after I’ve made it. I feel like there’s no better word, so I would say that there’s no intention behind that. That is me witnessing it and being like, “Oh, that is a great word for it.” Strange, strange is very subjective obviously. I find it strange for a lot of reasons, I guess. I wonder if other people do as well. Other people might not, but I certainly do.

Strange implies a sense of mystery. You’ll finish a piece, look at it, feel that strangeness. Does that elicit a sense of mystery of where that came from? Or is it more the self-reflection of what you’re processing as a part of that? It’s an interesting cycle, creating strange things.

Yeah, certainly interesting for me. I hope it’s interesting for other people as well. The mysterious aspect is the fundamental me not really knowing or, in that moment, caring where the artwork comes from. Afterwards, if someone asks me to describe it, I can. It doesn’t interest me to speak about it in a larger sense. I know for myself, having looked back where a lot of those things come from, it’s like this strange, hidden language that I know because there’s certain aspects in the sketchbooks that I look back on and will be like, “Oh, I was absolutely dealing with this at this point.” I didn’t realize it at the time, when I was working through it. But I look back and it’s like, “Oh, that is so clear what that is.”

The mystery, the strangeness, is maybe in the process, and then you look back and you attribute meaning to it. I think it’s probably fundamentally mysterious to people viewing it, because I’m not giving a lot of context for the sketchbooks [I’m publishing]. I’m going to be writing a bit of an intro or an outro. I’m not sure where it’ll sit, but it’ll give some context. For the most part, though, I want it to stand and have people view it however they want. I don’t necessarily want give them meaning to view it with.

In that way, you don’t want to take the agency out of the artwork for the viewer, right?

Right.

Outside of your comics work, you train in Muay Thai. Does your process for approaching training differ from your artistic process at all?

That’s a great question. I haven’t really thought about the process. I thought about the differences in the approach. The work that I do, it’s very meticulous in terms of the mark making. There’s a lot of time put into it. It has a delicacy, maybe a sensitivity to it, and there’s certainly a harshness, but I also feel like there’s a softness. I think with Muay Thai, it is an incredibly violent sport, and the act of hitting pads as hard as I can, releases a different thing. There’s a rage there that I’m able to exercise. There’s a kinetic velocity behind things that feels important at that moment. The sparring has an artistic quality to it. Obviously, it all does, but the sparring has…

It’s hopefully, not always, but hopefully more relaxed, more playful. You learn things, you adapt, you figure things out about yourself, what works for you, what doesn’t. But I’d say that the Muay Thai has an aspect of conquering, maybe fear conquering. Maybe conquering is the wrong word for this part, but understanding your physicality better, and the artwork has very similar aspects. It’s just displayed in a different way. Yeah, so very similar, very different. It’s a great balance. Obviously, it’s a perfect balance. There’s no wonder why a lot of artists also do martial arts of some kind. There’s a lot of people who do jiu-jitsu. I know a lot of people who do Muay Thai who are comic artists, artists in general. It just has a good balance to it.

I’m sure it’s fun too in some cases, depending on the artist and the thing that they write. There’s an element of thinking physically about certain movements or maybe acting out and feeling the dynamism of things you may draw. Yeah, there’s a nice connection there too. One thing that I thought was really interesting that you touched on, there’s the aspect of exercising rage, and anger, and the violent nature of martial arts. Would you say that that emotion for you is pretty specific to martial arts training, or is that something that’s shared within your artistic process as well? How does that emotion blend over, if at all?

Well, I think, first of all, I want to maybe correct a little bit of what I was saying, just for context about martial arts. There is absolutely a violence to it, but it is about control. It’s about, if you’re going to fight, definitely having a violence, you need it but you need to be calm. You need to control it. You need to be playful in certain ways. It is the balance within one type. There’s the balance within art. I want to make sure that it isn’t just violent. There is an aspect to that that I really enjoy, but there’s also the other aspects that I just talked about.

I guess, is there a violence in the artwork? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you look at it, there’s a lot of viscera, a lot of intestines, a lot of bodies distorted, broken, a lot of blood, a lot of people not having the best day. Hopefully, there’s also a balance where it isn’t just that, that there’s also a weird serenity to it. There’s a hopefulness. That’s maybe another part where the strangeness comes in, trying to balance those things.

This post was originally published on The Creative Independent.