Influences

March 4, 2012

I spoke in an earlier post that I contemplated changing the title of my latest in-progress Wister Town horror story. I began writing the tale with the operating title Our Lord Weathercock. Tens of thousands of words later, I decided I’d name the story closer to its origin. I’m calling my horrid tale of small town rivalry and vengeance Midwestern Days of Noah. An anti-protagonist is named Bill De Corbin. I’ve debated changing his name to Noah, but two-syllable names often interrupt the naive poetic flow I make each of my paragraphs follow.

My artwork is similar my writing. Forgiving Surrealist diversions, the figures in my paintings appear extraordinarily distorted because my influences. When I painted as a young man, I tried bringing the murals of Michelangelo to canvases the size I could manage. My paintings were acrylic and about 32″ x 48″. I’ve given most of my artwork away but I keep a few.

The artwork for the cover of Midwestern Days of Noah is not one. I recreated the image from Michelangelo’s Sacrifice of Noah seen in the Sistine Chapel. Photoshop helped me correct the gross problems I encountered with the image – and I cropped it further for the book cover. Take a look -

Matthew Sawyer's Midwestern Days of Noah

I’ve included text in the design I present here because I simply don’t have anything more of the image. Most of my artwork vanished like that. There are only fragments and prints remaining. I’ve got those in my Print Shop at Deviantart. You’d make me happy if you bought a print…

My last batch of paintings revolved around Christian mythology and following the congenital path of Original Sin. The end of the story is possibly Jesus, but there are those doubting Thomas‘.

The inspiration for my artwork was not limited to Michelangelo. I also examined the paintings of Dali, O’Keeffe, Picasso, Van Gogh and others. I’ll share my example and sketch-of-an-homage.