Susanne Janssen

Duality or double coding in fairy tales. The idea of making Hansel and Gretel identical twins came to Susanne Janssen after reading about the Italian version called Nennillo and Nennella". She studied under Wolf Ehrlbruch in Dusseldorf, and now lives in Alsace.
"The story of Hansel and Gretel, one of the oldest known European repertoire with this title and the variants that we know - first part has strong similarities with the Puccettino (Thumb)(1697) by Perrault. But the theme of infants who are abandoned by poverty and that find their way home already appears in the "Gartengellschaft" by Martin Montanus(1559) and Giambattista Basile Pentamerone with the title "Nennillo and Nennella"(1634-1636)."(Benson S.F.) Cycles of Influence:Fiction, folktale, theory.

This is where I grew up.

Pistache

Le Gun talk and workshop.

Salford Uni had a 2 day event with Le Gun collective members Chris Bianchi and Bill Bragg. They gave a talk about how they started publishing their magazine whilst still at the RCA, and how it has expanded from 1000 to 5000 runs so far. They started off by inviting students, professionals, and anybody whose work included drawing to submit work for the magazine. Last year around 500 illustrators submitted work, according to Peter Lyle, Varoom Summer 2009 edition. Besides Bianchi and Bragg, the collective comprises four other members, Matthew Appleton, Robert Green, Alex Wright and Neal Fox. They said that sometimes, in their drawing collaborations, there can be as many as 30 of them working together on a project. Their main interest is in sequential narrative illustration, and they suggested they have a more fine art approach to illustration, in that they want to take it in a broader context than just the industry at present, and are also more interested in the "drawings you keep in a drawer" than conventional illustration. They use an old fashioned printing press and letter press and produce the magazine themselves, and are intent on producing the work in the best quality they can. They showed slides of their work, explaining how it came about, and also an animation for Pete Docherty. Studio 8 asked them to decorate the Royal Festival Hall with their collaborative illustrations for the D&AD awards in which they produced life-size drawings of various people in the design world.

In the afternoon, Mark and I took part in a workshop of drawing characters, which I enjoyed. The following day we started on buildings and scenes as an environment for the characters to hang in, hoisted up on string, and it all started to come together really well as a collaborative event.

Henry Darger

I first heard of Henry Darger whilst studying the work of Paula Rego who cites him as one of her influences.  Then I saw his work at the Secret Service exhibition at the Whitworth Gallery.  I like the colours and composition.  He was a recluse and an outsider artist.  His work has a lot of narrative and is definitely a bit weird ( thats putting it mildly).  Some would say disturbing.  However, all that interests me and I would like to find out more about the content of the images and what's driving it.  There is also a film called "The Realms of the Unreal".  

Cy Twombly

I have been looking at Cy Twombly's work because the free use of paint and textures. I also like the use of text scrawled into it. There are more examples of work from the Tate Collection.