Art Monsters - Interview With Neil Blevins

IA: In Gas City 2 one can feel weightlessness, the slow motion lift of a gigantic spaceship, do you like working on matter? Is it your objective in your art work to make us feel the environment and the subject?

NB: In some ways, I sort of think of my subjects as materializing from the atmosphere, or at least walking out from the atmosphere to greet a surprised viewer. Same with this image, you're riding on a space craft, and then from out of the fog a giant tower in the sky materializes.

IA: Even though an extremely mechanical a human shape appears in Reaper IX, is it a new series? Can you tell us more about that?

NB: Well, the reaper series came from an early childhood TV experience. I remember this show (I have yet to find out what the show was!) where a group of people walked into a room and were surrounded by these pillars and all of a sudden the pillars came to life and began attacking the humans. The thing that was most creepy was that the creatures didn't seem to make noise; they were totally silent and motionless until they attacked. It was very different from most monster movies I'd seen up until then, and it scared the crap out of me! :) That image always stuck with me and it inspired the reaper series. In the series I explore different configurations of a "reaper" character. All reapers are tall, menacing, closed mouths or no mouths at all (silent) and generally have a single eye that is always staring, some have cloaks but they don't have to. This series I expect will be never ending, as I continuously come up with new ways to explore this same type of character.

IA: You use 3D tools, yet to the untrained eye your work looks like painting realized by 2D tools, is it your way of deleting the technique behind your art?

NB: This is a very conscious choice. I like the level of realism and precision that you can get with 3D art, however, I feel it can be too lifeless. I spend a lot of time adding dirt, grime, atmosphere, etc. to give the images a more organic, chaotic feeling. Also, when doing 3D, which can be a very slow, planned exercise, I miss the immediacy that 2D can bring to a piece of work so I strive to combine the two. I use the advantages of both techniques to achieve the image that's in my head.