I find it difficult to talk about my artistic influences, mostly because I am not entirely sure how to define “influence.” Much of the art that inspires me has little stylistic effect on my own work. Is influence defined by emulation? I certainly have an emotional reaction to a lot of artwork and in turn hope to make art that is equally or at least similarly impacting. Like any artist, I am emotionally very connected to whatever I create. I somewhat buy into the notion that all art is autobiographical though perhaps not to the extreme claimed by some proponents. Looking back ,though, at my early work, some patterns are noticable given what art I was exposed to at the time. Perhaps then, influence is only noticable after the fact and, unless one is intentionally copying another’s style, remains unconscious to the artist.
Like a lot of little boys who are interested in drawing, most of my youthful subject matter was typically boyish stuff, from robots and tanks to dragons and castles. At the end of my teens, after starting to learn about a bit of art history, the first genre that really had an effect on me, that I really came to feel compelled by, was Expressionism, especially of the German variety. 
Death & the Mother – Käthe Kollwitz
the Mothers – Käthe Kollwitz
Calling the work of Käthe Kollwitz “dark” is needless, obviously. Her subjects epitomize the oppressive, the nightmarish, the bleak. Had she not concentrated so heavily on human suffering, depicting anguish in nearly every artwork she put her hand to, the aesthetic qualities alone would inspire sorrow and dread.
Expressionism came into being at a time when the new art form of cinema was starting to develop. As anyone who’s taken an Intro to Cinema course can tell you, some of the earliest, most interesting films were of the German Expressionistic kind.
Still from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – 1920
Still from Nosferatu – 1922
What most appealed to me at the time was the strength of the emotional impact compared with the simplicity of the style and composition. The most noticable quality is the contrast. Stark blacks and whites with the occasional grey make up the majority of what’s in each frame. I love the efficiency of it.
Sadly, (or perhaps not) little of my early artwork survives so I can’t offer too many examples here. Most of my work from high school has long since disintegrated or otherwise drifted into obscurity. The only piece that I still have (which I don’t even remember what I titled at the time) is a small, simple series painted on handmade paper, only in black. It’s nothing I’m terribly proud of nor does it cause me embarrassment like some of my later work (It wasn’t bad for a 17 year old). But it does show some of what I was influenced by at the time. The contrast and the solitude of the figure are right out of the expressionist rulebook.
A few unfinished sketches remain, excavated from some dusty portfolio. The two here seem to show that early influence of expressionism but more in terms of subject matter than aesthetic (that and maybe one too many Nine Inch Nails videos). Being sketches, I can imagine that they might have blossomed into dimmer, more shadowy finished works. But as is they are simple line drawings.
Neither of these images are compositions I’d be interested in now. There is entirely too much teen angst in them, which is ancient history for me. But I admit that the dreamlike quality still appeals to me on some level.
The last examples of early Expressionist influence are a couple of paintings from my early twenties. They certainly embody the heavy shadows and solitude so often seen in the genre. I framed them like a medium shot in film, hoping to capture some feeling of confinement in deep shadows. I chose dramatic colors, partly for the emotional impact but also because I hadn’t yet learned to appreciate subtlety. By this time though, I was beginning to move away from the surreality of Expressionism and into more realistic figures, as illustrated by their faces. This kind of high contrast interior space would continue showing up in my work for the next several years.
Gothic Arches No Exit
As I mentioned, by my early twenties I had become more interested in realistic depictions of the world. And given my aforementioned love of narrative art, naturally I gravitated toward more classical genres, one of which was the Pre-raphaelites. The Pre-raphaelites get a lot of love and a lot of hate, depending on who you are talking to. I won’t engage in that debate here. Rather I’ll just say that I love the genre for the two reasons I’ve just stated, realism and narrative. Capturing a moment in a story was central to painters like John William Waterhouse and John Everett Millais. Their interest in history and mythology is something that I came to share, the older I got. These three drawings (the first two by Waterhouse, the third by Millais) cause me to feel uncomfortably convicted, seeing how good they were in mere sketches. Yet despite my initial jealously/discouragement, they do inspire me to work harder to reach that level.
A contemporary of Waterhouse, though not a Pre-raphaelite, was John Singer Sargent. His work is another source of inspiration, again simply for the realism of his figures. Many years ago I managed to catch a Sargent exhibit at the National Gallery in Washington DC which left me deeply moved and motivated.
Many years later, I would find myself coming full circle when I discovered Czech Expressionism. Though far less known than its German neighbor, Czech Expressionism is, in my opinion equally deserving of attention. What I find especially appealing is that the Czech version is far more realistic in its figures yet still contains the moody darkness that is the signature of the genre. One of the best is The Black Idol by František Kupka.
Through Fire and Dust 