John Gieg - April 2024

Thinking back it seems as though I spent my entire childhood riding my Stingray, climbing light poles, reading comics or drawing monsters. I know that I attended school (Sequoia Elementary in Prairie Village, KS and Claypit Hill in Wayland, MA) but I have hardly any memory of it. 

I loved to draw, and though no prodigy, I was hooked early on. My sketches were inspired by Creature Double Feature and Famous Monsters of Filmland. Like so many kids of the 60’s, I was spellbound by the artwork of Jack Kirby, Wally Wood, Basil Wolverton and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. They are still my heroes (along with R. Crumb, who I discovered later on). 

Monsters from my adolescence were mostly chimeras. Hybrids that arose from my interest in nature, mythology and evolution. 

Now an older adult, the monsters are increasingly hybridized creations of disturbing, shared aspects. They are from my life in East Providence, mostly from these past few years, and are reflective of this time of significant personal loss, growth, anxiety and pain. 

A repeating theme are these powerful yet badly damaged things from dystopian junkyards. Giant, shambling assemblages cobbled from bits of cast off armor and ancient Disney automatons mixed with Aztec fragments and fleshy, Lovecraftian parts. 

Unreliable deities, these feckless, broken gods.

My adult sketchbooks are filled with creatures drawn in different styles with lots of experimenting. Often combining and juxtaposing elements. An Olmec head with mechanical parts seen in cross section, for example. A bearded sock monkey holding a holy bowling trophy, or an Audubon style egret riding a unicycle. There was a sense of the ridiculous in these that shows up less often in more recent works.