David Shrigley

David Shrigley, born in 1968, is an artist based in Glasgow. He attended City of Leicester Polytechnic’s Art and Design course and studied Environmental Art at the Glasgow School of Art. He directed Blur’s video for ‘Good Song’, and in 2005, designed a London Underground leaflet cover. Shrigley is best known for his sardonically humorous drawings which are released in books and postcard packs, amongst other media.

I think the fact that I now love the work of David Shrigley, is a true testament to how much my understanding and appreciation of drawing has developed and evolved since September. I’ve been familiar with the work of Shrigley for quite a long time, but only in the past few months have I really started to consider him as one of my influences. Aesthetically, Shrigley’s work is much different to mine; he uses a deliberately limited technique in his black linear drawings juxtaposed with hand written text, often with crossing outs. He occasionally uses ruled lines with his text and image which jars oddly.

But what I really like about Shrigley’s work is his humour in his flat depictions about life, often written from the most obscure viewpoints. I like his style of composition with regards to how he puts together text and image and how each drawing looks as though he has isolated a single thought from his stream of consciousness and captured it on paper. His drawings look spontaneous, clearly not over-thought, which is an aspect of Shrigley’s work I would really like to replicate; his uncensored playfulness.

Image from: http://cache.gawker.com/assets/resources/2008/04/shrigley.png