Don’t look at me – Richard Sanz

Everything Richard Sanz does starts from a love of observing and drawing. Cartoons, art, films and everything of all kinds influence him. People are stranger than fiction; to abstract them making them stranger or animalistic renders them more normal, the fantastically mundane, and equally to make the fantastical seem commonplace. Matter of fact abnormality. He states:

‘I would like to think my work is a product of a curious mind, a visual rant with each image a sentence. Everything I do is grounded by drawing, it all begins with a line. Many things influence me; animators, films, trees, my cat… They are all in the videos, so if you see a recognisable influence, write it on the back of blank email to me and I will reply telling you if I like that influence on that particular day. I really am a magpie. I always want to take books, DVD’s, YouTube links, people I see on the bus, drawings and pad out my nest with them, in a very wholesome way. It gives me something to look at. I just like things that tickle my brain and my eyes, anything.’

Experimentation is key seeing where a line can go, happy accidents, what happens if he deforms something, or uses filters for purposes they were never intended, in search of interesting results, these are filtered back and reused in his work in a controlled way. He likes interesting results, if it fails, then it’s an interesting failure. He stresses he is learning all the time.
Richard Sanz is a freelance visual artist based in Bournemouth, having studied animation at Arts University Bournemouth in 2001 his work is influenced by cartoons, mainly the violent ones. As well as drawn line art, he also makes animation making things move.

“Don’t Look At Me” is a series of black and white drawn portraits, roughly based on people the artist has made up or never met during his lifetime, they are not related to each other, the title, or anything else.

richardsanz.com