Influences

In my personal sphere my mother and my Uncle Barry are enormous inspirations for me. My mom, a very talented fine artist, won a scholarship to the Liverpool College of Arts when she was quite young. If I was to paint every minute of every day for the remainder of my life I still wouldn’t come close to attaining the artistic talent she has naturally. My Uncle Barry is a phenomenal sculptor, be it metal or wood, stone or snow the man can transform a void into a marvel in a very short time period. I can vividly recall the details in the owls he carved and surrounded us with as children hidden in the forest behind the Green House on Ryan Road keeping a watchful eye over us as we discovered the wonders of nature. To this day I have a facination and a love of owls as well as a tendency to carve into anything at hand be it chalk, soap or wood.

My personal taste in art tends to be more design based, graphical imagery, symbolism, colour fields, patterns… more of the ‘low brow arts’ than the ‘fine arts’. Some of my fave’s include:

H.R. Giger
Chad Michael Ward
Mark Ryden
Susan Seddon Boulet
Garry Meeches
Norval Morrisseau
Gordon Fiddler
Haida Art

Cubism is cool where as I dislike Impressionism, Monet being the exception. I appreciate Avant Garde, Surrealism and Art Nouveau whilst many of the ‘master painters’ in fine art hold little interest for me other than perhaps interesting life stories and character traits. The exceptions to that being:

Gustave Moreau
Pieter the Elder Bruegel
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Willian Blake
Sandro Botticelli
Francis Bacon
Leonardo da Vinci
Joseph Cornell
John William Waterhouse
Claude Monet
Adolphe-William Bouguereau
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Hieronymus Bosch

Aesthetics vary for each individual and why we are attracted to one thing and feel an aversion to the next is, in my opinion, a very deep rooted psychological and subconscious thing. I grew up during an era of ‘Pop Culture’ thus it is what interests me though by no means is it the only art movement I enjoy, my tastes vary from the classical through to modern day Graffiti. Art by it’s very nature comes from within and is an outward manifestation/projection of one’s subconscious being. A colour, a brush stroke, the play of shadow and light, texture, subject, style, symbol… each play a role in telling a graphical story, how we read that story depends on how we ‘see’ the world around us.

All content Copyright © craftwercz Studios. All Rights Reserved.