Jacen Burrows: Bits of Moore

Excerpts from an interview posted on Electric Transit few days ago.

You can read the complete piece HERE. 

I became aware of you from your Avatar Press work. Did you do any comics work before Avatar?
Jacen Burrows: [...] There was also a brief stint where I worked for Scott Clark as his background assists guy when he was doing Wildstorm work in the 90’s. He just so happened to move into a house a few doors down from me. I drew a big crowd scene in an issue of Wildcats and some random backgrounds in a Spawn/Wildcats crossover. Pretty minimal but I still count it because the script was by Alan Moore!

I’ve read there is an Alan Moore Lovecraft book unreleased by Avatar. Do you have any other unreleased work?
JB: No, nothing but the aforementioned amateur work. I’m not even aware of the unpublished Moore work at Avatar but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I just know they were hungry to put out anything they could from him. [...] 

For more info about Jacen Burrows, visit his Instagram page.

Stella Sapiente Master by Jacen Burrows

Art by Jacen Burrows

Above an amazing and hieratic portrait of Alan Moore by JACEN BURROWS, the great artist behind The Courtyard, Neonomicon and Providence books. 

I am really pleased by this piece! Grazie, Jacen!

More info about Burrows: Wikipedia page - Twitter

DAILY MOORE [22]

Art by Jacen Burrows.

Colors by Juan Rodriguez.
From: Providence n. 12.
First edition: 2017, Avatar Press.

Dreadful Beauty: Alan Moore on Jacen Burrows

Art by Jacen Burrows.

Excerpt from the intro written by Alan Moore for Dreadful Beauty: The art of Providence (Avatar Press, 2017).

"[...] Jacen Burrows is, in simple terms, the finest stylist to emerge from American comics in the 2lst century. His art, combining a realistic grasp of space, form and anatomy with the more usually humorous cartoon delivery and precision of the European ligne clair school, achieves a kind of perfect balance that is almost archetypal; makes the style appear somehow familiar despite its bold originality, as if it’s always been there. And indeed, if it had always been there -- if Jacen Burrows, born fifty years earlier, had been amongst the ranks of brilliant individualists that formed the classic E.C. Comics line-up, say-- it wouldn’t have seemed out of place. The artwork and the atmospheres it conjures have a timelessness, a blindingly apparent mastery that would distinguish them in any era. Burrows’ work, eschewing half-tones, hatching and all other modelling or shading styles as if they were a kind of visual noise, emerges as pure signal, albeit a signal lent immense intensity and power by the extraordinary weight of information and exquisite detail it is carrying. His almost forensic line, impeccably controlled, refuses any ambiguity and in this way conveys a sense that what is seen upon the page, no matter how alarming or impossible, has a verisimilitude that borders on the photographic. It might be thought to embody the exacting realism that’s required in presentations of the weird or the fantastical as posited by Lovecraft’s rigorous aesthetic, and as such made Jacen the only conceivable delineator for an opus as demanding and definitive as Providence would prove to be. [...]

Providence art book and slipcase on Kickstarter

Art by Jacen Burrows.

Avatar launched a Kickstarter campaign to produce a Providence art book and complete slipcase set.

At the moment of writing the campaign has been already funded with more than $94,000 pledged of $8,300 goal.

More details here.

Art by Jacen Burrows.

The Queen of Spain likes Providence

As reported by El Pais, during the latest Madrid Book Fair, the Queen of Spain bought a copy of... Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows' Providence.

More info here, in Spanish.

Jacen Burrows on Providence

Page from Providence N. 1.Art by Jacen Burrows.

Excerpt from an interview to Providence's artist Jacen Burrows. Interview conducted by Hannah Means Shannon for BleedingCool.

HMS: For Providence, you get to draw monsters, you get to draw people, you get to draw people who are monsters. What do you think is viscerally scary for comic readers, and what are some of your strategies for affecting readers in such a way?
JB: [...] The hope being that when the horrific things happen or when our lead character stumbles into the darker corners of the Lovecraftian world that they will be all the more horrific in contrast. Robert Black doesn’t live in a shady nightmare world; he lives in our world, which sometimes intersects with things that will horrify him down to his bones. There are definitely some opportunities to design and show some really scary stuff, but I think it is the contrast with the recognizable but still somewhat alien 1919 setting that amplifies the creepiness.

[...]

HMS: What do you think of being the first artist to visually harmonize the majority of Lovecraft’s stories into a single universe?
JB: This is really Alan’s accomplishment. I know what it took for him to bring it all together and from the beginning my goal was just to deliver his vision as accurately as I could. As long as he is happy, I am happy. I’m sure once it is complete I will be able to appreciate the whole thing in more of an academic light as an enthusiastic Lovecraft fan.

The complete interview can be read here.

Providence N.1 preview

Art by Jacen Burrows.

Providence N. 1 will arrive at the end of May published by Avatar Press, with art by Jacen Burrows. In the meantime, BleedingCool has published a 3-page preview from the first issue of the series.

More details here.

Art by Jacen Burrows.

Providence is arriving!

Art by Jacen Burrows.

The much awaited first issue of Providence, written by Moore with art by Jacen Burrows, will be released by Avatar Press in May 2015. [Source: Bleedingcool]

[UPDATE, 14th of February, thanks to Flavio Pessanha]
The building depicted in the cover is set at 317 W 14th St, New York, NY 10014, USA [Google Maps] and it's related to Cool Air short story.

Lovecraft wrote Cool Air during his unhappy stay in New York City, during which he wrote three horror stories with a New York setting. [...] The building that is the story's main setting is based on a townhouse at 317 West 14th Street where George Kirk, one of Lovecraft's few New York friends, lived briefly in 1925. [Wikipedia]

It's Dr. Muñoz room from Cool Air.
"[...] after a time I came upon a house in West Fourteenth Street which disgusted me much less than the others I had sampled. [...] in my third-floor front hall room [...] One evening at about eight I heard a spattering on the floor and became suddenly aware that I had been smelling the pungent odour of ammonia for some time. Looking about, I saw that the ceiling was wet and dripping; the soaking apparently proceeding from a corner on the side toward the street. [...] Mrs. Herrero disappeared up the staircase to the fourth floor, and I returned to my room. The ammonia ceased to drip, and as I cleaned up what had spilled and opened the window for air, I heard the landlady's heavy footsteps above me. Dr. Muñoz I had never heard, save for certain sounds as of some gasoline-driven mechanism; since his step was soft and gentle." [Excerpt form HP Lovecraft's Cool Air]

Alan Moore goes to... PROVIDENCE!

The 22th of September 2012, during the first N.I.C.E. convention, Alan Moore announced his new comics project to be published by Avatar Press, PROVIDENCE, a sequel of Neonomicon. 

It will be a 10 part series, set in 1919, featuring Lovecraft himself as a character and exploring the inspiration behind the horrific mythology he created.

The series' illustrator has not been officially announced yet but it's highly probable it will be Neonomicon artist, Jacen Burrows.

See and listen Moore talking about Providence in the video below.