I have loved many of Tim Burton's movies over the years. But his creation of The Nightmare Before Christmas was the starting point a long family obsession of Tim Burton. His art and movies have been one of the many things my younger sister and I thoroughly enjoy together. Now, as an artist I know that we are influenced by other art and artists, but I guess I never truly put much thought into how much those influences affect our own personal art. A few months ago, a friend was looking at my drawings for the first time and commented that it looked similar to Tim Burton's style. I beamed and responded "I love Tim Burton." I never noticed the influence into my own work until that moment.
His drawings exhibit a fearlessness of his materials, although I'm sure he would probably disagree. All artists have this self deprecating way about them. But the lines of his drawings are whimsical, fun, mysterious and quirky. They capture the imagination that is without boundaries like that of a child. His poetry holds a lot of the same qualities.
Here are a few of my favorites from his book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories.
Stick Boy and Match Girl in Love
Stick Boy liked Match Girl,
he liked her a lot.
He liked her cute figure,
he thought she was hot.
But could a flame ever burn
for a match and a stick?
It did quite literally;
he burned up pretty quick.
Voodoo Girl
Her skin is white cloth,
and she's all sewn apart
and she has many colored pins
sticking out of her heart.
She has a beautiful set
of hypno-disk eyes,
the ones that she uses
to hypnotize guys.
She has many different zombies
who are deeply in her trance.
She even has a zombie
who was originally from France.
But she knows she has a curse on her,
a curse she cannot win.
For if someone gets
too close to her,
the pins stick farther in.
No comments:
Post a Comment