Meet the Badb Catha and her friends. Yes, out of the cold, sodden North we have managed to produce another of our weird art interviews. We had intended to ring the vet for more of Twiglet’s medicine, but then an artist called. Next time we’ll probably interview the vet and pump the artist full of anti-rheumatics syrup. That might be quite interesting.
We’re back in the UK today, and are delighted to introduce Paul Watson, a contemporary artist with a number of strings to his brooding bow. We met Paul through the Folk Horror Revival, and here he is in the e-flesh to talk to us.
(As usual, all work is copyright of the artist, and if you click on a piece of work, you should get a much better view.)
greydog: Many thanks for joining us today, Paul. As you know, last year we became interested in the Folk Horror Revival because our idea of ‘weird’ includes both fictional strangenesses and deep-rooted myths or beliefs. Before we talk about your work, what drew you personally to the folk-horror scene?
paul: It’s a combination of things, I think. I’ve always been interested in myths, and folk horror frequently draws inspiration from myth and folklore. I also have a deep interest in what Robert Macfarlane called “The English Eerie” (robert macfarlane article link), what he called “the skull beneath the skin of the countryside”.
I grew up in the 1970s and early 80s watching Children of the Stones, Sapphire and Steel, The Tomorrow People, and Tom Baker’s Doctor Who, all of which have varying degrees of what we now call folk-horror, so my childhood was steeped in it.
I like the weird, unsettling, atmosphere in folk-horror – it’s far more interesting to me than straight-out shock-and-gore horror.
greydog: Folk-horror does infiltrate and unsettle, an aspect we like as well. On to your own art. Perhaps you could tell us a little about the concept of the Lazarus Corporation, which you started in 1996.
paul: When I first put together a website for my artwork back in 1996 I decided to give it a name other than my own. Part of the thinking behind it was that Andy Warhol had “The Factory” (the name the artist gave to his New York studio), so I’d take that idea into the 1990s and have “The Corporation”.
The “Lazarus” element was a reference to both of the biblical characters of that name, and also to Dennis Potter’s TV drama “Cold Lazarus” which had been shown for the first time that same year, and an earlier comic strip by Warren Ellis called “Lazarus Churchyard”.
The very earliest version of the website was simply an online gallery for my own artwork, but over the years I added a few other artists and writers to it. Now I’m using it to sell artwork as well, and by the time you read this it will have also become a publishing company of sorts as my self-published book of my artwork will bear the “Lazarus Corporation” imprint.
greydog: You work in a number of media, including linocut printing, photography and charcoal or pencil drawing. Do you find any one of these more satisfying than the others, or do you use them to express different ideas?
paul: I find them all satisfying in different ways. Drawing is the most personal medium for me, perhaps because it doesn’t have the mechanical aspects of either printmaking or photography.
That said, I really enjoy the mechanical aspects of printmaking, especially the way you only see the image at the very end of the creative process, after you pull it out of the press and peel the paper off the linocut.
Photography is useful for making people look twice – we’re still used to trusting photographs, so if you see something strange in a photograph it grabs your attention.
greydog: Whichever medium you employ, you seem to concentrate on the human form. Have you ever considered working in other areas, such as interpreting landscapes or structures?
paul: I’ve tried other subjects in the past, but I’m always drawn back to the human.
greydog: Your photography reflects many aspects of European mythology, particularly the dark, prophetic or even vengeful aspects of women. What led you to go down this route?
paul: The main reason for concentrating on female characters was a purely practical one: the only models available were women. I’m glad to say that’s changed now, and I started some artwork with a male model last week.
I recently had the idea of doing two versions of each character in my photography—one modelled by a man, one by a woman—and somehow blending them together, either by displaying the photographs them side by side or digitally manipulating the photographs so that both male and female were combined in the same image. I’m hoping to pursue this in the future, making the characters a flickering mix of both male and female.
The dark/vengeful aspect is simply because I find dark characters more interesting – there’s probably a lot of folk-horror influence in that! To some extent the characters are all manifestations of some aspect of nature-as-uncontrolled-wilderness, so they’re not vengeful as such, just indifferent to humans.
greydog: We feel like that some days. You also used to produce complex collages – is this an approach that you’ve left behind?
paul: Yes, I made collages for many years, but towards the end the creative process started to feel a bit stale and formulaic – I wasn’t surprising myself any more or learning anything. Taking a lesson from David Bowie, I made a sudden and complete stylistic change (and change of medium), and moved into printmaking and photography.
greydog: Give us some idea of other artists who you admire. Do you look mostly to contemporaries, or do you feel influenced by what we might call ‘classical’ artists?
paul: A whole mixture, really, from Caravaggio to Francis Bacon, via William Blake, Francisco Goya, Edvard Munch, and Joseph Cornell. Robert Rauschenberg was a definite influence when I was making collages.
I’ve also always liked Expressionist artwork from the first half of the 20th Century: artists such as Käthe Kollwitz, Emil Nolde, and Oskar Kokoschka. I think they’re one influence on my lino prints. I also like some of the surrealist painters, particularly Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst.
As to contemporary artists I admire, there are two photographers whose artwork I really like: Ellen Rogers (ellen rogers link) is absolutely brilliant and I’ve bought prints of several of her photographs, and both of her books, and Caryn Drexl (caryn drexl link) is also very good indeed, and I’ve got a large print by her as well.
greydog: We’ve always been into Munch, and we know some of the Expressionist print-work, but not in any depth. Kollwitz is striking but very bleak (actually some of it is so bleak it’s hard to look at). We do like Kokoschka‘s bold prints.
Now, we ought to ask, as greydogtales covers a lot of weird tales, do you find any of your inspiration in fiction?
paul: Yes, I think a lot of my inspiration comes from fiction. I tend to read quite a bit of science/speculative fiction: Mary Gentle, Catherynne Valente, Gene Wolfe, David Mitchell, Ursula LeGuin, Lauren Beukes, Jeff VanderMeer, Paolo Bacigalupi, Karen Joy Fowler, M. John Harrison, Ann Leckie, Robert Holdstock, Hannu Rajaniemi, Jo Walton, Nicola Griffith, Steph Swainston, China Miéville…
greydog: That’s one high-powered list. We had a critique group of writing friends which included Nicola Griffith many years ago – very talented woman. Finally, give us a hint as to what we might see from you in 2016.
paul: I’m currently working on a new series of artwork based around a corn mask that I made, provisionally titled “Come unto the corn” – that should appear towards the end of January if all goes well. And at the same time my book of artwork “Myth and Masks” should be published.
I’d like to do more printmaking in 2016, but I can never really predict what direction my artwork will take. I’d like to try out some different things in 2016, but I don’t know whether it’ll be a new medium or a new style. Or both.
greydog: We look forward to following your work this year, and many thanks again for coming on greydogtales, Paul Watson.
For others interested in Paul’s art, you can find a range of his pieces on display at the Lazarus Corporation website, linked below. Note that the site includes occasional elements which are NSFW:
Another day, another fake dollar. We shall close, gentle listener, and plan more stuff intriguing delights for next time…
