ME . . . ARTIST?

One of my bad habits is grabbing something that makes a mark and creating images. Not quite the graven images forbidden by the Ten Commandments, but pretty damn close. I’ve done cartoons, illustrations, and magazine covers for money, but ever since I almost had to borrow a switchblade to get my ten lousy bucks for designing a newspaper ad for Mr. Velasco’s Haunted Psycho House when I was in high school, the dough’s been hard to get.

I admit, what I do isn’t pretty enough for the commercial art world, and not dull enough for the fine art world. And I can’t stop. That makes me more like one of those mental patients cranking out stuff on whatever’s handy rather than any kind of professional. So sue me. I got these weird things growing in my head, and there ain’t no known cure.

So, I always have a sketchbook, or two, or three, stashed around where I do my diabolical scribbling. I’m more of a cartoonist than an ‘artiste,’ but sometimes my surrealist/dadaist (modern terms for witchcraft and voodoo) heart gets the better of me. Maybe I have a nefarious agenda, but I’m not admitting to anything.


Recently, my wife and I had some of stuff framed, and it looks pretty good, but I’ve never thought of my stuff as being wall decorations. I don’t think of art that way. I believe that the best aesthetic experiences come to you like an sniper’s bullet, and bullfighting is the mother of all art forms. Call me crazy, but smile when you do it.


I once saw an interview with Ed Roth where he said he didn’t consider himself an artist, just a hard worker. He won my eternal admiration for that.

And I wonder, I am I working hard enough?

By the way, I also designed the "Mondo Ernesto" and "Em’s Joie De Weird" logos.