It’s Day 354 and I am so excited to pay tribute to another close buddy of mine…one of my bestest friends!  I’ve known him for years and we used to draw together all the time when I lived in Seattle and I couldn’t believe how hard I laughed at the characters he used to come up with.  I am constantly pushing him to do more art, draw comics and eventually make cartoons because I truly believe it’s one of his greatest talents.  Please join me in honoring Mark P. Wilson today!  I asked him to write his own biography as well.  It’s kind of short and I also wanted to pack his art into it.  Hope you don’t mind!

Biography, huh?  Well, I was born in March 13, 1976 and raised in Cedar Falls, IA.  I watched a ton of cartoons growing up and always enjoyed them all, even the crappy 70s low budget corner cutting ones and the weird asian import ones with bad dubbing.  I also really love the really old ones the Ub Iwerks, Max Fleischer, and Silly Symphonies stuff.

When Pee-wee’s Playhouse came out, I totally freaked out and was an obsessive fan.  Loved reading comics

(from Donald Duck and Harvey comics to Archie comics to superhero stuff) and satire magazines like Mad and Cracked and was very inspired by my older brothers attempts at this style of satire, which consisted mostly of poop jokes.

My Uncle Bruce was an abstract painter and his pieces hung around our house.  They were an influence throughout my childhood.  Also, our Grandma used to wear these wigs to work and she gave her old clothes and wigs to my mom for dress-up clothes for the daycare and those got a ton of use and appear in many of our movies as well.  I think that inspire some of the outfits my characters wear.

I was also really into sugar cereal mascots and marketing and McDonald land and all that Sid and Marty Krofft stuff.  I liked making up continued stories using these characters that seemed so obviously limited and disposable in nature.   I think my work is very crude/unpolished but the ideas are fun and the emotion comes through.  I tend to use bold black lines and bright colors because I’m a big fan of stain-glass windows.  I try to make my work have that same luminescent feel.

I think that I make art now for the same reason that I started doing it, to amuse myself and others.    I moved to Seattle

when I was 19 and eventually met Linda Cleary there and she showed me Michael Kupperman’s work and forced me to do a bunch of drawings and that started setting some things in motion.

I need to work more consistently, recently I’ve been into the idea of animating some of these creatures and hopefully that will actually happen (I have the software).

I currently live in Seoul, Korea and teach kindergarten.  I love encouraging

the kids with art projects inspired by their individual creativity.  In Korea there tends to be an element of conformity and I try to get the kids to trust their own artistic instincts.

~

I hope you enjoy my tribute today.  I had a ton of fun painting it.  It brought back memories and inspired me to get back into doodling and creating some fun absurd characters.

I will see you tomorrow on Day 355!  Only 10 more left!

Best,
Linda