9. Help YourselfBeware The Shadow
This was a band from Wales from the early seventies. They sounded like a west coast American rock band. I like this one because it looks like a kids book. It’s somewhere between Yellow Submarine and some other kind of classic seventies kids book; the art style is very much a seventies style. But there’s all these subtle things going on – drug references in the margins. And on the back, there’s badgers and gnomes smoking joints, and mushrooms. Beware The Shadow refers to this depression that comes on.
There are these elements to it that aren’t what they appear. The music is not as pastoral or idyllic as the cover might indicate, which I think is a nice contrast as well. It’s more rock. It’s not heavy, but it’s fairly good, midweight rock stuff. It’s just very eye-catching. You come across this in the record bin, you’re either, ‘Oh, what is this hippie stuff?’, or, ‘Wow! It’s kind of weird looking. What is this band like?’
I love nature, and I love depicting natural scenes, and the richness of the woods and greenery and trees and things like that – clouds and dramatic skies. There could be something about that which makes me like this. This has a very nostalgic quality. It reminds me of my childhood. It looks like the books I had when I was five years old. But it’s not that which is why it’s more interesting – it’s to use that for something that’s more adult. I don’t want the human to be the focus of my art, whether it’s a human or a creature or something, I prefer the landscape and environment to be the main protagonist of the artwork.
