Matt : Your clearly a man of some artists skill and knowledge, I would love to know what got you to where you are today and have you always wanted to be an artist ?
Jimmy : I’ve always been interested in art, especially comic strips. The Farside, Charles Addams, and Gahan Wilson comics were extremely impressionable to me at an early age and I still read and re-read all of their stuff. As for where I’m at today, I wouldn’t consider myself a professional artist or anything, if I was I’d be living in a shack in Antigua working on comics and drinking cocktails. I just enjoy connecting with people with similar interests and I have been able to do that, limitedly, with art. Your artwork seems to be taking the indie horror scene by storm in recent months what has your overall reaction and thoughts on this ?
Matt : Your artwork seems to be taking the indie horror scene by storm in recent months what has your overall reaction and thoughts on this ?
Jimmy: Of course it’s great to hear from people who dig what you’re doing as an artist but I can’t buy into the hype. I always assume someone else who is better will roll along and vie for the same thing as me so I just keep trying to move forward.
Matt: You clearly have a lot of influential friends in the industry, do u have many people you look up to ?
Jimmy: I have connected with a lot of people in the few underground horror sites I’m on but I wouldn’t say I have connections in the ‘industry.’ Truthfully, with few exceptions, everyone in the underground horror scene is very open to communication and I have got every gig by basically shooting people messages or emails. As far as looking up to people, I don’t think that way anymore. I still have my heroes like the artists I mentioned before or people like John Waters but if you look up to people too much you might get swept away with what they have already accomplished as opposed to what your own potential may be. Does that sound right? And a few times I’ve met people I’m very inspired by and they turned out to be fuckin’ pricks.
Matt : SinS your masterpiece for Tantrum took a lot of amazing feedback so I hear (I live in the UK go figure) everyone wanted a piece what was it like to commission something of that scale for probably 1 of the best movies of the year ? ....
Jimmy: I would do art for James forever and I was just stoked that he had me on board. I know his name is starting to get around a lot and he said his presales for Tantrum were exponentially better than Manuer, but I didn’t think of it on a huge scale when I was doing the art, I just wanted to do the cover because I liked his other two movies so much. Dog Dick is in my top 10 of all-time favourite movies for sure and I have a copy I designate to let people borrow all the time.
Matt: What have been your standout movies of 2015 ?
Jimmy: Tantrum for sure, I just think that movie was totally nuts and engaging. I really want to check out the new Vomit Gore flick too but I haven’t. I love What We Do In Shadows, but that’s more a major release. Other than that I haven’t seen a lot because I have been trying to focus on writing /drawing to get published. Finally got my first pro-gig coming up in the next issue of Girls and Corpses magazine so that’s great
Matt: You have worked a lot on most of James Bells releases giving alternative covers imagery forward to him what's the relationship like between you does he give you ideas or is it literally just all in your mind?
Jimmy: He told me to do whatever I wanted for Tantrum and the first cover I did that was more like a collage thing. I loved it but he had something else in his mind so he forwarded me some images and let me check out the first 10 minutes of Tantrum months before it came out. Rolled around some ideas and tried to get outside my art bubble a little and came up with the three covers, two for the regular DVD and one for the Vultra cover. Then people started responding well to them so I decided to do the extra cover for the pre-sale contest-which I felt turned out like shit on my end but 3 out of 4 aint bad!
Matt: What would you say have been your best and worse pieces of work?
Jimmy: Worst is definitely the 1/1 contest cover for Tantrum, it doesn’t sit well with me for some reason. Also a comic I did for The Horror Nation with squid people I thought was horrible, just total shit. And a cover of the Ryan Nicholson movie Famine I did for Uneasy Archive with a naked chick with maple leaves covering her nipples I thought turned out like total shit. A flyer for a GG Allin cover band with a pit-bull I thought was terrible. Hmmm, I wish I would have done more with the art for the Adjust Your Tracking movie, but they seemed to like it. I’m sure there are plenty of others because for the most part I don’t like a lot of stuff I do. Best I like the Tantrum covers, another comic I did for the Horror Nation with a frat house being covered by a poltergeist I thought turned out pretty good. Another comic titled Black Mass Gas was good and we’re going to try to make it into a poster for a Head Shop/Heavy Metal/Apothecary store in Astoria, Oregon. Hmmmm, I recently did a couple covers for some limited Uneasy Archive tapes that turned out cool.
Matt: What's in the future for yourself anything you can share ??
Jimmy: Hmmm, I’m hoping this gig from Girls and Corpses magazine will last and open up some doors. I have a graphic novel I’m working on now that I hope will get somewhere, and a lot of ideas for other graphic novel/comic things. I’d really like someone to give me a shit load of money so I could disappear for a while and write like a 600 page graphic novel about the craziness I’ve lived in the funeral industry. I’ve talked to James Bell about doing the cover for his next flick. That’s about it for now I guess.
As always follow Jimmy's work he will be showcasing a lot of artwork in the future and hopefully a sick cover for James Bells new movie ... as always it was a pleasure.
