Chris Weston - genius and gentleman.

Chris Weston is a bloody genius, I've long said so.

He's also a gentleman. :)

Check link: http://chrisweston.blogspot.com/

Love you Chris - in a manly, techno-barbarian way! :)

Liam.  

"Worry Doll" hailed as landmark!

Hey all.

Great news for my publishing company - hopefully!
Matt Coyle's "Worry Doll", which MamTor published recently, was picked up in a feature today by Australia's largest circulating newspaper, "The Australian":

"The Weekend Australian's art critic Sebastian Smee has labelled Worry Doll "groundbreaking ... so far ahead of anything out there in terms of visual sophistication that it suggests a new way forward for the genre, maybe a new genre altogether"."


http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21296779-5001986,00.html

Matt has also been making TV and radio appearances, and the work is grabbing the attention of the fine art world.

"Worry Doll" is being distributed through Diamond, and is also available now on our website with free postage world-wide: www.mamtor.com

It would be great if we could shift the indi curse somewhat, and actually get some real sales!

Very best,

Liam.

Free Your Dragons!

Free your dragons!

The age of 38 has been eventful, fascinating, sad, and incredibly enlightening all at once. I've had a series of epiphanies this year; some dumb (I finally figured out what "a stitch in times saves nine" means. Being about as literal-minded a fella as you'll likely meet, I'd always thought that the refered to "Stitch in time" was actually, y'know, a stitch in the fabric of time. I was cool with that part, but exactly WHAT of the denomination "9" was this space/time weave supposedly saving? Hurt my head for decades that one. And if you've not figured it out yourself, it can all be made so much clearer with the addition of the word "just". Not saying where though...) others not so.
It might seem bloody obvious, but most of us are great at paying lip-service to ourselves. We understand our mistakes, and our quirks with the mental acuity of the reader of a work of fiction. We figure out the plot, understand the points, the structure, what went wrong. We see the LOGIC, and we GET it. But we don't ABSORB it. It stays in the bit of the brain that houses memories of stories, dreams, day-to-day living. It stays liminal, but doesn't get deep into the core subliminal level, where it becomes part of our state of being. We're not fixing the wiring, and we're not rewiring ourselves so we don't make the same mistake again.
In my case I've known - as have those who've been generous enough to read my ramblings over the years - that I've been unhappy with my achievements. I've waxed lyrical about how unexpectedly tough creating art can be, and how much of a struggle it is to be understood, to find your style, to be true to yourself and remain motivated. I don't want to go back into that area here, as it's not what this blog is about, but I've also seen with the eye of a reader of fiction the success I've had. And that's the point. It was as a FICTION I understood this. A logical reality filtered through memory and mental disection, never actually becoming part of my self-belief system. It stayed up top and didn't get absorbed, and as such I never FULLY believed it, and was therefore never able to enjoy it.
This might not be as clear here in my writing as it has felt as a kind of awakening, so I'll try to make the illustration clear: I've dwelt, ultimately, on my failings and short-comings artistically over the last 20 years. I've analysed it, tried to be clear and dispassionate in my understanding. I've tried to apply logic, and not to let myself get too clouded up with a sense of failure - that ultimately lurked beneath the surface all the time. I tried to be circumspect, and to give honest information about the nature of practicing my trade. Occationally I've patted myself on the back by reminding myself about the work I have done over the years, but that's where I was really DISHONEST, as I did that witheringly. It remained, as I said earlier, a kind of fiction. I didn't truely believe it, or appreciate it. Yes, they were the facts, but I didn't absorb them in any kind way that would enable me to benefit, or draw strength and satisfaction from them.
And now it's happened. It's gone deep. It's reached the inner part of me, and spread like a drug. I don't know if it's more than just my age, or what triggered it, but it's a bizarre kind of serenity that is born specifically out of alowing that understanding to go deeper than just my logic centres. It sounds like hippy new-age bullshit, I know, but it's akin to waking up. Trust me! I'm looking back and KNOWING that there's merit in what I've achieved, even if it's only me that appreciates that. I've understood that external appreciation, the admiration of peers and those that have enjoyed my work over the years, is a great, momentary and unsustainable pleasure. Yet ultimately it remained the thing I most craved - and missed. I saw, logically, that it was futile to build a career on the back of that, and to judge myself by that, and yet that's EXACTLY what I did. And in doing that I missed a much bigger picture: I had done, and achieved, pretty much everything I ever wanted to, almost without realising it, because I had forgotten how to draw and think like a child. I stopped enjoying it, pitted myself against the monsters of my trade - talent-wise, and also success-wise. I bullied myself worse than anybody has ever bullied me in the real world. So I never really saw the full picture of what I was achieving, (and I hope you'll forgive this indulgence, but it is the point here,) I never understood on any deep level how successful I had been in achieving EXACTLY what I wanted along the way.
I wanted to draw barbarians. I drew "Red Sonja" and "The Death Dealer".
I wanted to work on european comics. I assisted Don Lawrence on "Storm", even painting some of the last pages of his final album.
I wanted to work for 2000ad, and did.
I wanted to draw the XMen, and did.
Likewise "The Hulk", "Manthing".
I REALLY wanted to draw something for one of my all-time favourite magazines from the late 70's, early 80's, "Heavy Metal magazine" - and I did, writing and drawing "A-crazy-A", and also becoming great mates with the mag's owner, Kevin Eastman.
I've draw adult horror in "GOTH". I've done creator-owned stuff, and even become a publisher, a small-time film-maker, writer, singer-songwriter, comedy writer, and I worked on a couple of big feature films. So why has it taken me so long SEE this, no matter how many times it's been written in my biog, or for interviews? Why did this just look like a list, and not a life?
I think the truth lies somewhere in the removal of "self" from the equation. In making it a list, it became just a list. Not a life, but rather a kind of fiction. I looked at that list and forgot that somewhere at the start of each job lay an amount of will and personality, a desire to do each one, and a maverick, near self-destructive need to re-invent myself every time in the shape of one of my myriad heroes. I forgot that I chose that path, and focused on the hardships. I neglected to enjoy the simple notion that I had, if I'm honest, gotten exactly what I wanted - and instead I recalled how hard and generally underwelming each of those achiements felt in the execution.
I'm at a wonderful place now. I've done pretty much everything I ever wanted, and I'm starting to appreciate it fully for the first time. I don't have the same number of what my father calls "dragons" filling up my head. I've finally freed so many there's a bit of space up top, and it's a blessed relief! I can look at art now without always wanting to emulate it. I can appreciate success without secretly wishing it was my own. I'm appreciating my choices and my achievements, not because they brought me a kind of very low-level fame, or because my peers thought I was great, but because they were things I wanted to do, and I did them. For myself. I DID them! And that's actually pretty fucking cool.
Free your dragons, folks, but don't forget to watch them fly!

Cheers all.

Liam.

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