I was one of many in my generation who grew up on comics throughout the 1970’s, got distracted in the early 80’s by the distractions of music, cider and local slags, and was enticed back to the medium by all the style mag articles in the late 80’s stating that comics was the “new rock & roll.” My renewed interest coincided with the arrival of Dave McKean and he soon became one of the most emulated artists of the period.
Over the years he’s moved away from this method of working, but I prefer them to the Photoshop manipulations that have since made his name, which seem far too reliant on the seemingly-limitless potential of elec-trickery. Working with paints, collage and found materials, there were certain things he couldn’t do that gave him a barrier to rebound his ideas against.
He also perfectly captured the mood of those early issues of Hellblazer which, like all such projects extended way beyond their potential, soon collapsed under the weight of the author’s pretensions. Once removed from the demon-haunted modern landscape of council estates, Ballardian car parks and barren playing fields, Alan Moore’s “wide-boy occultist” lost his compass and by the time he’d ended up in Glastonbury with the crusties I knew it was all over.
It’s curious how “dated” this work now looks, but it was these images – perhaps more than any others – that convinced me this painting lark might be worth a crack.
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