I’ve always liked putting things together that don’t belong. Not sure where that visual rebellion came from, but I did it often throughout my early student years learning how to draw, and I still do it today. Call it tension or the rub, or an obstacle that must be overcome but that struggle is necessary to me, to do something fresh, and new.
There is a visual dopamine hit when you see things that don’t belong together, actually put together in some intelligent way. It’s a surprise, a double whammy. Musicians, filmmakers, and actors do it. The shock of the New. Once I learned how to draw, I could realize these ideas in my head, and transfer it to a surface without much frustration. I become quite deft in my drawing ability. So I drew hard and often. But juxtaposing visual was always in my DNA. It's what also made me a good Art Director and Creative Director.
So specifically, here in this drawing called, "Jerry Has A Bad Habit", it’s putting to an animal, human characteristics that are odd and shocking. Anthropomorphic ideas have always fascinated me. I decided to do a short series of anthropomorphic black and white drawings in the mid 80’s.
I was doing Sunday edition editorial commissions for the now defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Because I began turning my fine art training into something more applied, like illustration, I couldn’t get enough of it. Many of the illustrations for those two years were commissioned. But because I began thinking like an illustrator, the cosmos of editorial ideas started popping up on my radar, in my head and ultimately made it onto paper. I drew it because I had the idea, gorilla as a man with a bad habit. Which was the third time in my life I was trying to quit that nasty habit. I guess this is actually just an anthropomorphic portrait...of me.