Matthew Craven is an illustrator and former street performer from Grimsby.
Can you explain what you did with the Earthbound Misfits? Were you a tumbler or the bloke who got fired from a cannon?
Nor a tumbler or the guy who gets fired from a cannon! I used to do ‘street performances’ with the Earthbound Misfits, the guys who taught me from the age of 12 in school. Predominantly we would perform circus skills workshops and street theatre. We’d often perform character based acts and interact with our audience sometimes using strange costumes designed and made by myself, such as ‘Mel’ a shy, ugly and reclusive creature that collected smells using a coconut powered machine (captured on film here by Mr & Mrs Swing). I used to teach unicycling, tight-rope, globe-walking, club passing, fire breathing, diabolo etc in schools, festivals and sometimes at the strangest corporate bonding/teamwork sessions and one for the young British Olympic Team, that was different, in a really posh manor house with a “buffet” consisting of raw vegetables, raisins and bananas!
What made you go from being a magician to starting up in illustration? Do you still perform?
I had no real desire to become a proper magician. It stemmed from a lack of income and people asking the Misfits if we knew any magicians. It was however a real childhood passion of mine, almost an obsession. I began to loose interest after I won Young Magician of the Year at our regional Magic Circle and as I began sixth form college, I thought it was a bit geeky, I was a bit geeky. Both juggling and magic always allowed creativity in my work but never satisfied me as art and design could. I knew jumping straight into uni after foundation would be a mistake, so I deliberately lived in shared flats in Grimsby allowed the entertainment work to fizzle out and worked shit jobs to thoroughly depress myself into the realisation that uncreative jobs are unsatisfying and a massive waste of time and in time, I’m sure, would affect my sanity. These days I only perform magic when I’m bored at the pub.
You work in quite a few different styles and media, is there any particular type you enjoy more?
I’m still in the exploratory stage of finding what media works best for me. I enjoy the realism and credibility oils offer, but I’ll always resort to the first medium that I fell in love with; ink. Recently I tried working in 3D which I found to be quite successful, it caters for my more conceptual work that wouldn’t necessarily work as a 2D image. I’m looking for a happy medium that’s beginning to form in my recent experiments in mono printing and collage, combining them with ink drawings to form dark, rich illustrations which deliver much more than my previous work.
You can see some grotesque influences in the illustration like Ralph Steadman, Gerald Scarfe and the like – who else do you look at for inspiration?
Well I absolutely love Steadman, and for better or for worse my drawings have always been compared to his. Recently I was lucky enough to see David Hockney’s dry-point etchings for the Brothers Grimm Fairy tales at the Fishing Heritage Centre in Grimsby. These illustrations are absolutely beautiful and influencing my work for their simplicity, intelligence and fine technique. It’s hard to think of all the artists who’s work inspires me but one’s which pop into my head are Ronald Searle, Jenny Saville, Gerhard Richter, Takashi Murakami, films by Joe Magee, Yuri Norstein and the sculptural work of David Shrigley, Ron Mueck and Wilfred Wood’s wonderfully weird characters. I also find inspiration in comedy, music by Young Marble Giants, old amateur photographs, doodling and people watching.
Looking at something like The Hump (which reminds me of an eerie cross between a morris dancers horse and some outcast from the Henson Workshop), do you ever want to stick costume/stage design into your work?
In all honesty costume design is unfortunately very time consuming, sometimes expensive, sometimes requires far too much sewing which I’m no expert. For future three dimensional work I’ll just be sticking to sculpture but these creature/costume ideas will no doubt permeate my 2D work in some capacity. But then again, if someone was to commission me to design costumes I wouldn’t say no!
Whats your Monsters series about? I get the Barry & Paul and Bellamy references, what’s the Marcus one?
Those Monsters are a response to a university brief called “Make Me A Monster” it was character development project developed, I think, to delve in to the darker regions of our imagination. Initially my ideas were 1:1 scale deformed humanoid blobs in antique glass domes. I began thinking about their personalities, so I gave them names based on people from I knew years ago and of course the Chuckle Brothers who I never found funny, just disturbing. The naming influenced the designs and working with old personal photos and those I collect from books and newspapers shaped them further into what they are now. There’s something reassuring and haunting about these photos/stills from the past be it funny, innocent or profoundly sad. I plan to make more of these with more emphasis on a scrapbook feel to them with more critical distance from situations and people from my past Informing my 2D work and vice versa.
I’m at a very fortunate position at the moment, it’s the end of my second year, and I have a whole summer to waste on my artistic whims before the stress-riddled third year and finally the outside world.
You can find more at:
http://facebook.com/pages/Matthew-Crav-Craven-Illustration/125770520794866
