While Banksy and urban artists like him are my main energy source, the most significant inspiration to my formative teenage years and the first art I truly fell in love with has to be the work of
H.R. Giger.
I still have an art book of his I got hold of years ago. I used to have to hide it at a friends house back then, like it was porn or taboo - harem. I used to feel so cool and naughty for having it. It’s a bit dog-eared now, but still one of my most prized possessions.
He’s better known for creating the most beautiful and deadly monster ever to grace fiction - the creature in Ridley Scott’s classic 1979 movie,
Alien (as well as the gorgeous set design and architecture).
Giger - Necronom VNot only did he create one of the most iconic and recognisable movie monsters, but he also created a twisted Freudian symbol of sexuality and body violation. Sexy nightmares - strange, scary, exciting, all at once. Truly alien, yet all too familiar on an instinctual level - tapping into that fear of the trap, loss of control, that we all simultaneously reject and envy, and sometimes crave.
Giger - Begoetterung XI“There is a kind of beauty in there somewhere, if you look for it.”~ H.R. GigerHis art takes all our animalistic wants and needs, our primal desires and impulses, and shows them raw and unapologetic as the dark, dangerous, exciting things they are.
Giger - The ShinerGiger - AlephGiger - AcrowleyReally, a few pictures don’t do his massive catalogue of work justice. He’s so prolific, I could never post enough to give a real feel of his art. He is like a Da Vinci, full of ideas and sketches, concepts, shapes, poetry, meditations, and visual metaphors, parables and philosophies. He is truly unique, a landmark artist, out of time, ahead and beyond his time. I can’t gush about him enough.
Website
HERE