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The story of "My Nuclear Fiend" starts a few years back with the image on the left. I was working a pretty boring 9-5 job doing nothing I particularly liked doing. My band, as all bands do, was having ups and downs differing levels of commitment and vision. I was gradually working myself into an unhappy place. 

To counter this I decided to take up drawing again, with only myself to please it seemed like the perfect getaway. I set up a table in front of the T.V and got my tools/supplies together. I stuck on a Tim Burton film (not sure which ones but they are all in my favorites) and let myself relax in a room by myself. I didn't know what to draw, I had no fresh ideas but whilst watching the film my hands got to work, what appeared an hour later was the image on the left.  

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At the time I wasn't sure what it was, whether Tim's weird characters had put ideas in my head or whether it had come from my subconscious. Or perhaps it was a mix of both. 

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Fast forward a number of months and I had decided to retrain as a teacher and had taken a severe pay cut to do so. It was still a struggle and we tried to support ourselves. A few of the previous unhappy thoughts and gremlins had begun to plague my mind until one day in the shower things got a little more weird.

I closed my eyes to wash my hair and felt a presence in the room, thinking it was my wife I wiped my eyes to see what she wanted but no one was there. I closed my eyes again, the same feeling there but more intense. Eyes tightly shut I tried to ignore it but I began to feel something, see something. It was the shadow of the image I had drawn all those months ago. For a while after I could not shut my eyes without seeing/imagining this weird humanoid that I had drawn. It used to worry me, It even frightened me. Through music and art I began to get all my feelings out, pay rises and positive thoughts also helping I stopped seeing it, I stopped feeling its presence. After a lot of thought I began to feel it was my mind manifesting the bad thoughts, almost my mind attacking itself. Through my art I have tamed this beast and I control it like a pet now. I named it "My Nuclear Fiend" as it is the inner most part of my minds demons. 

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I have been exploring what My Nuclear Fiend represents, where it lives, what it does. These have become the themes of my paintings. They all have their meanings rooted in mental health and inner demons, so I hope they have some meaning to other people and could even help people turn their demons into pets. 

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