Do artists see things differently from normal people?
This piece is taken from my 2013 ‘Fiendish Comix’ show.
I painted all the canvases first and then selected the collage elements. Only once those were glued down did I go looking for speech bubbles – I knew that if I chose them first I’d end up letting the words influence the collages.
I found this particular speech bubble really poetic and held it aside waiting for the right canvas to match it with. It sounds a bit melodramatic and self-pitying which is exactly what I wanted, I’m taking the piss out of pretentious artists who feel things more much more acutely than the rest of us, just as much as I’m taking the piss out of well-dressed Victorian characters.