#johnjpearson

Suspiria AMP by John J. Pearson

CREATOR SPOTLIGHT vol.7 | JOHN J. PEARSON You may recognise this week’s creator from our post about small press day and our store expansion. He’s an incredibly versatile and multi-disciplinary artist as well as a staple of the comics and art scene here in Leeds. Say hello to John Pearson! Hey John, can you tell the folks at home a little bit about yourself?   I'm John J. Pearson, I'm an illustrator, muralist and artist based in Leeds. I co-created the British Comic Award nominated series Beast Wagon with writer Owen Michael Johnson. I've worked with a number of artists and writers on both small press and published worked, exhibited both in the UK and US, painted murals across the country and worked with a variety of clients creating everything from album artwork to poster design.   Do you have anything exciting cooking at the moment?   I've been working on a few pitches recently; a couple are waiting with publishers and a few are in early developmental stages with the writers. Everything ranging from witchcraft revenge to cute early years children's stories, I've really been trying to flex as many artistic muscles as possible with these new pitches, with the intention of really testing my creative limits as the projects develop. Aside from that I've got a number of shows with G1988 in LA coming up over the rest of the year, as well as a few live painting events and murals coming up, and hopefully a couple of new print projects testing out some new creative directions.   You always seem to have a bunch of different plates spinning at once, are there any main themes or ideas that tie your work together? I've always been interested in illustration that has heavy painterly qualities, and I've been trying to expand on that recently. Historically I've leaned towards saturated, dense illustrations that hold a lot of weight in the use of colour and composition, and my new work is trying to strip that back a little to the basic core qualities. Depicting movement, emotion and establishing a connection with the viewer through expressive mark making is where I'm trying to take my focus, taking what I've learnt so far from my illustration practice and broadening the impact through a slightly subtler approach. What about influences, who or what are you stoked on and why? Cinema plays a large role, not just in terms of sequential imagery but also colour and composition. The saturation of Mario Bava and Dario Argento, jump cuts of Goddard, experimentation of Kenneth Anger and crisp dream-like weirdness of Seijun Suzuki are all hugely important to me. Illustrators like Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave McKean and Ashley Wood take a lot of what I love about illustration into comic books, especially the experimental nature and the painterly qualities I've always had a connection with. Dreams play a big role as well, and not just surrealist imagery. I document my dreams as a cabinet of interesting images, but more importantly as a way to dissect how those images relate to my own personal experiences and emotions, and the link between the visual representations of those abstract concepts. I'm a firm believer in experience being intrinsic to illustration, so I take my subconscious very seriously as a source of visual imagery, and contextualising some more outlandish choices that may be made.   Do you have any advice for people wanting to start out in any of the fields you work in? Don't stop creating, always have something going on, it's easy to fall off the wagon. Go out and experience everything and channel it into your art, live it and draw it. Make sure you have contracts, don’t let yourself be exploited, meet everyone, do it for yourself on your own terms and enjoy every second of it.     And finally, lay some links on us!   www.johnjpearson.co.uk Instagram: @johnjpearson Twitter: @johnjpearson  Look out for John doing some live art at our Small Press Day event on Saturday 7th July and pick up copies of Beast Wagon from your local Travelling Man!