yep, so the artwork i was telling you about a while ago [link] has now been used on the front cover of good vibrations magazine [their website]

AND they’ve run a  little article on me inside too, with a whole bunch of artwork that (if you’re familiar with my stuff) you’ve probably seen before.

it’s a bit of a strain to read the text on the pic, so these are the words…

Monster Mash

by David Hazelwood

Liverpool’s resident Zombieking, Chris Fairrie, brought his brand of horror illustration to the front cover of this issue of Good Vibes magazine. After a long discussion on ideas, it was decided that he would do his take on two Liverpool icons fighting for control of the city. We caught up with Chris to see what lubricates his art’s gears.

GV: What influences you as an artist?

ZK: I have a pretty cynical and misanthropic view of the world.. I guess that permeates what I do. No matter how wonderful something appears, there is always an underlying dark edge. Though, on the flip side, I find beauty in the some of the more disturbing subject matters.

GV: What current projects are you working on?

ZK: Throughout this last year, my main theme has been ‘Death & Rainbows’ – placing dark imagery (skulls, dead babies) amongst vibrant colours. It’s not to everyone’s taste, but has been surprisingly well received!  Also, I’m working on an ongoing series of horror icons, primarily characters from the Hellraiser mythos.

GV: How would you describe your style?

ZK: I’m a horrific illustrator.

GV: If you could be any artist living or dead who would it be and why?

ZK: I suppose Simon Bisley is the one. His 2000AD artwork for ABC Warriors and Sláine was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. I realise this may make me sound like a philistine, but absorbing and attempting to copy his style had more impact on me artistically than of the great masters. I know plenty other artists who cite Bisley as a major influence too – it must be quite something to have created such a significant and inspirational body of work.

-

“Dear diary, 

People say that the world didn’t come to an end yesterday. But, after midnight, things altered.

A malevolent evil rose up in every place that Man called civilised. An abyssal militia came forth, slaughtering all they found. I waded through the lakes of viscera left in their wake, and knew it was time to show my own colours.

The wounded innocents; the hiding children; the sleeping babies; they were all my prey. I perpetrated acts which made me delight at my own depravity. I felt emancipated.  

And then I awoke in my bed.

I was back in Hell.”

the ones where this one lone polar bear has been stranded on a tiny fragment of ice, adrift in the middle of the arctic ocean. the frozen chunk is hardly big enough to accommodate it. and to make matters worse, the platform is melting too. but the sea is so vast and so cold that if the bear tried swimming for it, it would die before reaching any landmass.

you can see, in that photograph – as the polar bear perches nervously – that it knows deep down, it is utterly fucked.

right now, that’s me.

i dabbled with creative writing a good many years back. a poem here, a short story there.. and even though i didnt mean to, i began to write a story. just few lines at first.. but it grew and grew until id been workin on it for several months. the story grew and it absorbed more time. the problem with doing something like this though, is that because i never meant to start it, i didnt know how to finish it.  so i typed it up and showed it to a few people, i even read the first chapter at my creative writing group.

“oh my christopher, what a dark mind you have!” was the overwhelming reaction!  indeed.

the general concensus was that while the story had some creative merit, it was impossibly dark. nobody would be willing to read a story like this. one suggestion to make it lighter was something along the lines of “it  would be much more palatable if all the characters were dying from cancer.” 

being the artist that i am, it was impossible to write without also drawing. i drew a fair amount of  sketches, illustrations and even a few paintings based around the characters. this image below was my vision for a potential book cover to complement the story.

“the lost girls of plasterboard falls” [acrylic on canvas, finished in photoshop+painter. circa 2005]

the image should give a flavour of the story. grim huh? oh, and yeah – im afraid the entire thing is written in rhyme. looking back, im not convinced this is a good thing – but i can only assume i’d been reading tim burton’s oyster boy at the time.

so, i briefly considered self publishing [which is where my interest in jaye's posts comes in!]. however, i quickly realised that i didnt have the knowledge, skills, or finances to go down this route.  alongside all of the sketches and character illustrations id been working on, i packaged my story away.  and its been in that cardboard grave for over 5 years..

but maybe its time to dig out that old corpse and see how it looks in the cold light of the day?

“the lost girls of plasterboard falls” [detail]

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