Illustration/Mixed Media
John Gieg – An introverted artist who makes dreamlike images of intensity and humor.
Hybrid Fables, 2020 – 2025.
Images that blend and juxtapose different genres. For example, it may have the look of a medieval woodcut – but for a medical cross section, Olmec ruins and a sock monkey. There is tremendous expressive range in the hybridization of unrelated sorts of drawings.
There’s an experience, a connection that I am always hoping to replicate. I remember first encountering the illustrated “Bulfinches Mythology”, Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So Stories”, the works of Edward Gorey, Chas Addams, and the Italian writer, Italo Calvino, (his novel, “Invisible Cities” in particular). Something that connects personally – a charge is passed. One of the best feelings I know is when my art resonates with someone.
Though the artwork may at times seem like fragments of a lost mythology, I’m striving for curiosity and wonder rather than presenting a showcase of the bleak. There’s a gentleness to the monsters, for instance, that saves them from being Lovecraftian, and the ruins are too colorful to evoke dystopian despair.
Johngieg.com