The Shed

Below is the introduction to my new book The Shed (You can download a free digital copy here - [link] or order a print on demand copy,) available at the San Diego convention. It's a tribute to the late Jeff Jones (if you don't know his work look him up!) and the other three artists that comprised of The Studio way back in 1979:

In 1979 I was 11 years old and I was about to stumble across a book that would astound, inspire and challenge me more than I could ever have guessed. 32 years later it continues to captivate, and its legacy can be traced throughout my career. The book was called The Studio, and the four artists whose work it showcased were Jeff Jones, Michael Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith and Bernie Wrightson.
Over the years I have been lucky enough to correspond with BWS, hang out with Kaluta and all too briefly share a little Facebook time with the late Jeff Jones.
Wrightson, frustratingly, I’ve missed on two occasions – At the San Diego Comic Con in 2010 when Joe Jusko invited me to dinner with him and I had a conflicting business meeting I couldn’t get out of. And a few years earlier at the same con when Tiffany Taylor, the Playboy model, asked me to briefly watch her stuff on the stand we were sharing. Immediately after she left the crowds parted like the Red Sea, and across the way, directly in front of me, was Bernie at his stand, momentarily alone. It was a chance missed – though I confess, there are few things I enjoy less than introducing myself to my heroes. It brings out the nerve-wracked child in me and I often loose the use of my tongue (even now!) and end up spouting bland inanities between bursts of inappropriate laughter. I watched across the isle as that void quickly filled up and Bernie was again swamped with admirers.
I first met Michael Kaluta at the lamented long gone UKCAC comic convention in London in the very early 1990s. For some two or three hours he regaled Gary Erskine and myself with tales of the Studio. Michael is Falstaffian in voice and physical stature. Like a mountain king his eyes twinkle beneath bushy brows, and being a captivating raconteur he holds court wherever he goes. He’s a quick wit too, and I’ve felt the sting of it on more than one occasion when my nerves have failed me, and I’ve plunged recklessly into a moment of silence with some comment devoid of forethought or relevance. But Michael is also the warmest and most generous of people. When later I met him at one of several pre-convention parties at Jim Silke’s house in LA he was extremely kind about my work, looking through everything I had to show him with patience and appreciation. I was with Michael when I last saw Dave Stevens at his house not long before he died, and here I got to see his great compassion and love for his friends.
Barry Windsor-Smith unexpectedly became a legal advisor to me at a very troubling point in my career. He lent me understanding and goodwill, and for that I’ll always be grateful. His emails from across the Atlantic were sage and levelling, but also extremely exciting to receive. This was BWS! Emailing me!
Jeffrey Catherine Jones died earlier this year. It’s a huge regret of mine that we never met in person, but thanks to the miracle of the interweb we were able to talk on Facebook. I had a couple of very pleasant private communications in which, again, I found wonderful generosity towards my work, and to whom I gushed in unashamed admiration.
You don’t get better than these four artists - so unique in technique, intent and delivery; so united in skill and artistic ambition. Jeff was an incredible, versatile and eclectic artist. His women - pregnant with thought in Idyl, wryly post-modern in I’m Age - were the most naturally beautiful of any I’ve seen in comics. The approach to the art - stylistically consistent to each world, notably different in technique – revealed incredibly delicate and sensitive brush and penmanship. He carved forms out of light with blobs of black ink. His sparse worlds were peopled with talking animals and dinosaurs, the occasional idiot man, philosophical dragons. Even the inanimate had voices and flowers screamed ‘fingers!’
Jeff’s paintings were equally witty, though often imbued with a palpable sense of longing, or loss, or a sense of being lost. Certainly many are lonely. The playful use of oils, the possibilities the medium offers, are all explored. No other painter has inspired my use of oils as much as Jones.
Michael Kaluta’s work is rich with detail, vivid with dream logic and yet possessed of a grounded solidity. His worlds are constructed around the protagonists, who are sometimes dangerous - A captive barbarian, naked and chained to a wall, steals a kiss as he rips himself free – sometimes innocent – a girl nervously watches her doll fall from her bed into a broiling dream-spawned storm. His illustrations always tell a story. This is narrative art clothed in decorative flourishes playfully adapted from the art nouveau movement and taken in new and unexpected directions. Ink and wash never looked so intense, or so exciting. Indeed Kaluta’s inkwork is not only incredibly detailed but also highly energetic – a feat extremely hard to pull off.
Barry Smith created a sense of threat in broad daylight. His Pre-Raphaelite-inspired imagery is haunted. The ground in his paintings is flecked with drops of blood, and the wind blows restless through his trees while mirrored – but not quite – images taunt the onlooker. Enigmatic symbols within symbols exasperate and tease. Man fights nature, kills what he doesn’t understand. You’re never sure who’s side you’re on, or if you really want to be there. We’re looking through a crack in the door, or from behind a tree, at something we shouldn’t really be witnessing.
Bernie Wrightson’s mix of gothic romance and horror is rendered with comic lightness but also dark intensity and sometimes startling sensitivity. His love of classic illustrators like Franklin Booth is absorbed and elaborated upon in his astonishing illustrations for Frankenstein (which I picked up in France in Hardback in 1985). The famous spread where the monster awakes in a lab festooned with glass baubles, bell jars and an elaborate welter of archaic scientific equipment is still jaw-dropping.
All have made their own indelible mark upon my art. It may be that The Studio was just a brief moment in time - a fantastic idea that could neither be sustained nor ever fully lived up to - but it created an early template for me. It gave me a direction, and something to aspire to. I didn’t have a favorite. I loved them all. I tried to create wonderfully designed and enigmatic images in line and wash, like Kaluta. I dressed everything in vines and hidden meanings, like BWS. I painted lone figures in empty landscapes in oil paint, like Jones. I drew intense black and white imagery of monsters in a technique that owed much to woodcuts, like Bernie Wrightson. All of them I have revisited again and again throughout my career, and I’ve also discovered through them the artists that came before. There will, I hope, be others who learn through my own work. We’re part of an ever-evolving chain, learning one from the other.
And all this leads, finally, to the point of this book – a collection of pieces drawn or painted by me that were inspired by one or all, in part or in whole, by the four unique artists that gave me The Studio. Art produced in no small part within the somewhat limited confines of my modest studio shed. This is my thank you to them, and a kind of tribute of sorts. I hope you enjoy tracing their legacy through my art.

Liam Sharp 23/06/2011