Interview with Marcus Schäfer

Q)First of all,..can you present yourself..?

A)I am Marcus Schäfer. Born in a small boring town called Delmenhorst in Germany. Since the age of ten I live in the Pfeffersack-City called Hamburg. I paint pictures, draw comicstories, build puppets and kullissen, make music , draw Posters for events I like,and from time to time take spraycans to paint with other writers. ...Ah uhm sometimes I make money as an illustrator.

Q)Do you think of yourself as an artist,or what?

A)Or what? Mh... yes,I guess so.

Q)What is creativity?

A)Gettin inspired by the world that surrounds you,something that stops you from being a passive consument of products. Creating something by your own ideas. Using the trash of Life to make it to gold . Playing with the themes that jumpin on you. Connect different ideas to get new conclusions.Creating, making babys.thinkin for yourself.

Q)Does your environment influence your art,either in style/format or interference?

A) The city I live in is an influence for good or worse. I often make sketches of people or places werever I go. I love the urban life. The people are more open for different things I guess and so there are more chances to try things out.

Q)What are some of your influences and inspirations?

A)My dreams and Nightmares, my friends, books, movies and comicbooks, art-shows excebitions, Dj's and concerts, Life in general. I grew up with cartoons, illustrated childrenbooks, comics and puppet-shows. They took a deep impression on me and my father always force me to create my own stuff of things that I love ( um ... and it's always cheaper doing things by yourself ) . So I did my own cartoons, comics and puppetshow. I thought Cartoon-movies where made by only one man. So early motivations to create were spanned by mistake. I had to learn a lot of things to create such beauties . I really wanted to do it, tiny me. I always wanted to create my world.
This love for Cartoons even took me once into the Graffiti-scene back in the ninties. I saw they all used Comic-characters for their pieces. I wanted to be part of something creative and indipentend from schools. So I brought my Comic characterz to the walls. The scene was a big influence for me. My Crew I’m got some of the finest Character artist of my City (asbeszt, Simo, Phank, ...). There was always creative battles between each others. Positivly a good school for skills. But I never was a writer, I always was a cartoon artist, secretly I try to learn letters but there were to many writers better than me (Daim ,Eiser, Aids..)

Q)What’s your favourite mediums (pen, charcoal, paint, canvas, etc…) to work in/on?

A)A Hb 05 pencil on paper. Acryl on Canvas. Glue, trash and spraycans. Bass, Guitar, a Mic and my 8-track-rekorder.

Q)Who are some of your favourite painters/artists?

A)Painters like
Rembrandt, Pieter Bruegel the older, Heronymus Bosch, Robert Williams, Eric White, Francis Bacon, Ernst Fuchs, George Grosz, Otto Dix, Frida Kahlo... Many more to explore...artists ?oh so many (I love movies. Always inspires me (there are so many aspects to create a movie, containing Storyboards for example) Certain ones really gave me kicks. Movies from Directors like Federico Fellini, Terry Gilliam, Seirgey Eisenstein, Jan Svankmayr, The Coen Brothers, David Lynch, Spike Lee, Emir Kustorica, Chuck Jones, Akira Kurusawe, Hayao Miyazaki, Alfred Hitchcock... endless list of others

Q)How long does it normally take you to complete a piece of your artwork?

A)Sometimes a few Minutes sometimes hours for a good drawing, sometimes a day or Months for a picture ( I never count hours, but in work in process I often work thrue days without sleeping). It's always hard to find an end for finishing a painting.

Q)What else are you interested in besides visual arts?

A)Making Music and perform concerts . SometimesI play rekords in little clubs but I am not a dj pro . I am interested in puppeteering and directing a short with my puppets but I don't know when this will happen (I played short cameos with my puppets at a hip-hop puppet-show called puppetmastaz). I always liked to taste different areas.

Q)Got any new projects planned?

A)The big lowbrow group Exibition right now at Feinkunstkrüger titled 'don't wake daddy' (organised by my buddy Heiko Müller ,with guests like Van Arno, Anthony Ausgang or Alexone). A little Exibition at the Goethe-Institut in Honkong with my frombeetobee artgroup . I just finished a surreal comicstorie 'ultralurch' in search for publishing. And some other other stuff I don't want to talk about right now.

Q)How would you describe your art to someone who could not see it?

A)In my paintings I try to bring the cartoonworld into realism. Using Pop-icons to put em into a new context .I often think like a director of a film , like:whom could I use for this kind of rule in my picture? I like antiheroes I think the nice and polish is boring and belongs in advertiseagencies.Sometimes I just like to play with forms of comic or cartoon language to express certain moods or feelings.

Q)What other talent would most like to have?

A)Makin lots of money without selling ma soul

Q)What are your most beloved items?

A)The magic pen


Q)Favourite books?

A)Naked Lunch by William s. Burroughs, Please Kill Me by legs Mc Neil, movies as subversive artform by Amos Vogel, the books of Phillip K. Dick, Kafka, Love and Rockets from Los Bros Hernandez (the best comic ever),the comics of Julie Doucet, Basil Wolverton, Robert Crumb, Jim Woodring, Daniel Clowes, Fil...It changes

Q)Do you remember the first draw you made?

A)No. but my early childhoodstyle was filling a big piece of paper with hundreds of figures doing different things, like describing a marketplace, or a pirate-battle. Very epic stuff

Q)What kind of music do you like and do you listen…And is the music important for your art…?

A)I always listen to Music when I draw or paint. Often Important to amplefy therten moods . At the Moment I listen more to older Punkrockmusic like Iggy and the stooges, Dr. Know, Black Flag , Bad Brains ('attitude',one of my alltimefaves), Devo. Soundtracks from Ennio Morricone,John Barry, Bernard Hermann, Raymond Scott, Roy Ayers.But I also like Brain Wilsons (the Smile-session-Bootleg from the sixties I really love),screaming Jay Hawkins. Much Funk and Soul Music(stuff from the sixties and seventies) like Steve Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Parliament-Funkadelic always brings me up. Electronic stuff, dance-hall (favourite dj. at the moment Olli from Sillywalksselection) Grime... Every Genre bears its Gems. My first band was a garagetrashsurfband called the Multiple-Maniacs. Now I sang to electric-beats and my old friend Kasion is playing the korg. Danceble

Q)Any advice do you have for artists?

A)Don't become an artschool dumb ass who only repeat phrases.Get involved, go underground, indipendent, ( um sounds also like catchphrases )...
get a real job...nah, just joking. Never give up

Q)Your contacts…E-mail….Links…

A) www.chunkymaggots.de
bibo_oly@yahoo.de