Today we’d like to introduce you to Landis Blair.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
While I was always drawing as a young person I did not ever imagine that I would be working in illustration and comics. I went to art school but concentrated on figure drawing and painting thinking that I would eventually end up as some sort of teacher. After failing, however, at getting into any MFA program after my undergraduate degree, I found myself working full-time at an art gallery in Chicago and I pretty much stopped painting and drawing. It wasn’t until the gallery closed down during the recession and I found myself unemployed that I began drawing and painting again every day. This ultimately led me toward my path in illustration and creating books as I re-discovered Edward Gorey during this time and was so taken with his drawings and stories that I eventually determined to try making some of my own. These small self-published books that I wrote and illustrated became the stepping stones to working in comics and book illustration.
Please tell us about your art.
I am a pen and ink illustrator and author of a number of small picture books that might best be described as consisting of nihilist whimsy. Additionally, I do illustrations for comics and other books. My work mostly consists of black and white ink drawings that employ an ample amount of intense crosshatching building up various textures and tones. While this process is labor intensive, I find comfort in the obsessive layering as I feel it helps mask my mediocre drawings. In terms of content and style, most of my work has some sort of macabre leaning which I think stems from my own questions, fears, and insecurities. By looking at this darkness through a whimsical lens, however, I am trying to take away some of my pervasive angst. It doesn’t really work, but I keep trying in any case.
What do you think about conditions for artists today? Has life become easier or harder for artists in recent years? What can cities like ours do to encourage and help art and artists thrive?
I think that today artists are able to more quickly find feedback and an audience for their work. While this may initially be an encouraging environment for an artist to work in I don’t think it is necessarily beneficial in the long run. It becomes far too easy for artists to become primarily concerned with a level of immediate feedback from their audience on social media. Work posted that receives more affirmation brings a temptation to the artist to concentrate on simply creating similar work rather than creating what they actually are passionate about. This dynamic played out over time and the compulsion–or perceived requirement–to post daily work for public consumption can lead to a shallowness in an artist’s work. The more a community can sponsor space and time for artists to create larger pieces of work the better. The artist needs time and space in order to escape from constant feedback and criticism in order to produce something greater than a fleeting creative moment on social media.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
You can read a number of my dark little picture books and see my other various illustration work on my website. The other books I have illustrated you can find at your local library or bookstore: “The Hunting Accident: A True Story of Crime and Poetry,” written by David L. Carlson and “From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death,” written by Caitlin Doughty.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.landisblair.com
- Instagram: @landisblair
- Twitter: @landisblair
Image Credit:
All image credits are my own.
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