Jim Woodring grew up in what Woodring describes as a stupid little town called Glendale.

He describes as the environment he grew up in as a fantastical environment where the skies were blue, men wore suits and hats and the cars were big American lead. Jim Woodrings childhood was his earliest apparent influences in his work. It consisted of an assortment of psychological behaviours including; paranoia, hallucinations and other species of psychological and neurological malfunction. Woodring described the age between one and twelve as the age of eyes because everything he saw had eyes. There was an Art and Music library with a morish architectural motif and he would go there after school and read art books and listen to music and that is where he got all of his artistic education from. When he was a teenager he got out and moved up the coast to Washington because he wanted to live where there is a chance of being killed by a bear and he actively ate wild mushrooms without knowing if they were poisonous or not. Before he smoked a cigarette or drank a beer he took LSD at the age of 20. I took a huge hit of acid and had the most horrible experience of my life. It incapacitated me for days before I could do it again. I took quite a bit of that stuff until it stopped doing what I wanted it to do. He was majorly influenced when he was young by a Russian/American illustrator called Boris Artzybasheff, other cartoonist such as George Herriman, Windsor Mccay, Cliff Sterrett, Norman Lindsay, New Yorker cartoonist, Jack Davies and Mad Magazine influenced him greatly. Although he doesnt draw like these illustrators he extracts from their work such as; volume, expression, negative space and applies it to his own work. He feels that they would appreciate other artists doing this. One of the best memories of my life is contemplating that first finished drawing and realizing I had cracked the code, that I could make drawings like this whenever I wanted. He describes this stage as the age of Jim which is all about his ego from when he was 12 until he was 40. Now he is in the age of cake which is an elusive and corrosive death cake his work is reflected from this and it appals and frightens him and he hasnt developed a vocabulary for this stage yet. For years he said that Art was his religion, religious impulses that manifest themselves in art but now he embraces God and the unknown mysterious. Seeing holes appear in your arm and disappearing into mathematical equations. Spirals and fractals devour you and you face your desideration in a terrifying way. Woodring is heavily influenced by his childhood aspirations he was fascinated by them and terrified. He didnt want to forget them so he would keep trying to remember, he was fixated to them and spent most of his life trying to keep them alive for this his social life suffered. I wouldnt let those childhood wounds heal. The tunnel kept trying to close behind me, and I kept forcing it open so I could remember those primordial things, the way that the world seemed to me as a child. Its been a vocation for me to keep that view intact. A lot of imagery from the old JIM comics and stories, such as Dinosaur Cage and Screechy Peachy, came directly from delusional episodes. Woodring wanted to keep these hallucinations prominent so he dabbled in hallucinogens such as LSD and when that no longer did

what he wanted to do he took a drug called salvia divinorum which has been described as the most powerful natural occurring hallucinogen, which he believes it is. He was convinced he was dying and had been taken to another reality and when his wife spoke to him he heard thousands of voices coming out of her. He describes it as a very alien experience. This experience had an effect on his work and some drawings such as Life After Man was an express of ideas that were influenced in those few minutes. The question of what is happening, things we cant perceive but which concern and affect us. Drugs allow Woodring to see these answers for a limited time. Art and drugs are really similar they show you places but wont get you there. Woodring describes himself as a story teller rather than a cartoonist. He writes out the story in words so he knows where its going and what is in it and then when he draws out the comics there are no words at all. He has to write it out in a way which gives him clues of what he is supposed to draw. At least three drafts are written during the writing phase of it because that is where he does all of his correcting. Once it is all written out he describes the process as mechanical, its just a matter of breaking down the pages into a sequence that he wants and then its a matter of laying it all out and drawing it. All the corrections, stumbling and tears happen in the writing phase. In his writing he sets the stage; bring the forces together, and then whatever happens he records it. Though Frank has amazing and terrible experiences, he never learns anything. It would be a catastrophe for the story line if he did. He would stop acting like a child. Knowledge extinguishes the flame of curiosity. He makes things happen, but hes also protected from the consequences of his actions. His work schedule consists of 10-12 hours a day. Woodring doesnt have a set goal because sometimes a page is very complicated and will take two days to draw and other times he can do 2 pages a day. His schedule isnt a set output schedule it is more of a time schedule which is hard to meet sometimes as it is difficult for him to force himself to sit in a chair all day and draw especially if its nice outside. Wooding explains he works the best when he is enthusiastic about life in general if he is pessimistic or ill it is hard for him to draw. His only ritual for drawing is to get up early in the morning and get to it as soon as possible because he does his best work in the morning. The time it takes him to write a story can vary. He can write a short story in an afternoon. Recently he has began to do 100 page stories and they generally take 2 weeks to write because there is a lot of business built into them. Problems are encountered with these books such as working in sub plots and worrying about act 2 dragging out etc. It takes him 2 weeks or more to have the story firmly in his mind. Woodring tries to avoid doing warm up exercises he feels like the first take is the best take. If he warms up too much he then feels his best minutes are behind him. He draws on a sheet of Bristol with a hard pencil and then he tightens up the hard pencil with a soft pencil and goes over it with dip pen and Indian ink. The dip pen is a bit of fetish item for me (as it is for many pen users). The pen is extremely difficult to master but ultimately allows for an extraordinary degree of expression. The well-constructed pen and ink drawing is a monument to perseverance, requiring tremendous patience and control. I am thrilled by the challenge of creating such drawings in public and introducing new audiences to the allure of the medium. He does not consider himself a surrealist but he has always loved work where you cannot see the actual subject of the picture that the artist has managed to capture the emanations in a certain way.

He best describes it as a fluorescent light. You cannot see the UV rays but you can see when they make certain objects glow. To him surrealism has that glow you cant see the thing that is lighting up the picture but you can see the light coming out of the picture. For example a De Chirico painting of a rubber glove and an artichoke, its not about the artichoke and rubber glove its about the emotions that they convey which are too complicated to be shown directly that they have to be shown in this strange symbolic way and thats the kind of work Woodring likes to do. It is hard for him to explain how it is when he knows when he is on the right track but he feels a certain sense of disengagement, which work comes to him automatically. The best work he does is when he is not thinking about it. He describes it as taking down dictation from some silent voice, if I think too hard, if I plan to consciously my work gets very weak. He has these random moods where he can access thoughts and ideas which he cant ordinarily access and this is when he most enjoys his work when he is less overtly participating in it. The messages are the strongest when he starts dreaming before he falls asleep but they are also the most incomprehensible. He describes it like watching a movie and it is intense, disorienting and frightening. If he had to depend on his conscious mind to make a living where he had to be logical and sociable and ordinary he wouldnt be able to do it. His work relies heavily on his subconscious. Jim Woodrings most notable works are his dream based comics which he published in his magazine Jim and his generic anthropomorphic character Frank. Woodring first started in the creative industry in 1979 as an animator after being persuaded by his friend to work for Ruby-Spears animation studio. While working there he began self-publishing Jim which he describes as an auto-journal it consists of free-form writing, comics and dream art. He was introduced to Fantagraphics Books in 1986 and became a regularly published the series Jim.