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My name is Willard. I have been an artist for thirty-nine years, since 1984.
I have been an experimental noise musician since 2019, under the moniker Spukkopf.
I am a Structural Pessimist, a Defeatist, and Body horror enthusiast.
When I was in my teens, I drew each evening sitting at the coffee table. The first thing
I remember drawing is the corpse-on-spikes from the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” movie. Ever since
I was young, I felt something was wrong with existence. Today almost forty years later I draw
this wrongness as often as I can.
Years later in my 20s I had begun filling sketchbook after sketchbook with all sorts of
strange drawings. I simply could not stop drawing.
It felt as if I was simply unable to live without drawing every night, deep into the night.
I drew my own body disarranged. Later I did several sketchbooks of pessimistic and ink and glue drawings.
Over the years I discovered different artists who could not find any adequate way to express
the utter horror, nightmare-like, pessimism, and monstrous nature of existence without the use of
monsters and nightmares. In no particular order, or the order of my bad memory remembering–I recall
being very fond of Ernst Fuchs, Hieronymus Bosch, Francis Bacon, Francisco Goya, the Hell Mouth,
and Medieval woodcuts. I also recall liking Odilon Redon’s darker black and white works.
There must be others, but I can not recall.
Later, I went to art school and specialized in printmaking. During this time, I became disillusioned
with art, the whole “fine art world” thing, and art school. So, after finishing art school, I gave
up art altogether for 11 years.
In 2017 I became seriously ill. My health got so bad. This mystery illness led directly to me taking up drawing
again in 2019, around July 2019. A few months later I began reading Thomas Ligotti and watching
horror movies. Both of which began to influence my artwork.
Among my favorite horror makers are Thomas Ligotti, Robert Morgan, Junji Ito, H. P. Lovecraft,
David Cronenberg.
I am fond of old medieval woodcuts of demons and etchings of monsters, deformities, diseases and demons.
The philosophy of Julio Cabrera most aligns with the way I see the world. I draw this by drawing monsters and making ambient-industrial music.
—Willard
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