Painters: What/Who are Your Influences?

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I personally take the Ancient Egyptian method of depicting the human form and use an oblique projection to convey depth, especially in my many cityscapes. When I paint abstract, I am influenced by Andean art and the art of the Islamic world, as I see those 2 areas as the places where abstracted art was/is most developed. For example, I am painting an Andean-style strip pattern with Islamic style interlace patterns and various fractals, some of which I came up with.

I grew up influenced by comic artists like Jeff Jones, Bernie Wrightson, Jose Gonzalez and Frank Frazetta. Now I paint in skin, though a lot of the preliminary work is done in Prismacolor pencils. I'll borrow influences and techniques from anywhere and combine them into something completely different. Sometimes clients already have specific ideas in mind when they come in.

My influences are my life, nature, music and fantasy art. I'm also inspired by Alex Gray and Vincent Van Gogh. Vincent Van Gogh is becoming my role model. He never gave up on his art even if he did not have much success while he was still alive. His work came from the heart, and his use of color and texture is simply breathtaking.

My special intrests

My artistic influences are plentiful: H.R. Giger, Alex Grey, Hieronymus Bosch, digital artists like David Em and Joseph Nechvetal, and Abstract Expressionism. I think, as far as technique, my biggest influence is Francis Bacon-- there's something remarkably visceral and honest about the looseness of his style, which I try to capture in my own paintings. Content-wise, I usually try to focus on a few themes consistently-- one of the major ones being technology, which is where Giger and the digital artists play into my work. They're more conceptual influences than technical ones.