artwork focus:
“City of Sociopaths”
Jeffrey Beebe
“City of Sociopaths” (detail)
“The Hobbit was my first introduction to fantasy, followed shortly by Lord of the Rings, and R.E. Howard’s Conan, Frank Herbert’s Dune books, H.P. Lovecraft, Piers Anthony,Terry Brooks, etc. Film hit me in a parallel fashion: Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back, Hawk the Slayer, The Sword and The Sorcerer, and that shitty 1980 Flash Gordon movie with the Queen soundtrack. All of these things gave me a basic language, a way to analyze and categorize the world and my experiences. As I grew into adolescence—and, past that, into whatever passes for adulthood—I drifted away from these things and tried to become more “mature”. However, the language was imprinted on my brain and I always filtered my experiences through the crude ideas of good v. evil. hero v. villain, antagonist v. protagonist. I always saw myself as the protagonist in these endeavors but my low self-esteem made me a superhero without super powers.
My work didn’t really start to take shape until I allowed myself to use this specialized language, to begin to build childish parodic myths around my predictable adult experiences. Naturally, these events had to unfold in a world—a campaign setting to use the D&D vernacular—so I invented Refractoria—my imaginary autobiographical world. After that was establishing, all of the drawings came with greater ease and clarity.”
– Jeffrey Beebe (jeffreybeebe.com)
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