I began my research by considering the classical monsters and drawing inspiration from those. The mythological monster which I looked at is Amphisbaena, a snake with a head at each end which came from the blood that dripped from Medusa’s head as Perseus flew across the Libyan desert. I was thinking about the way that these mythological monsters are pieces which aren’t meant to be together but stitched together into a whole in a collage manner. This made me think about the way that I will create the monsters for the project.  A monster is something that terrifies us, a mutant of our fears, therefore I saw using a collage style to communicate this in the right way.

To bring this idea away from the classical an to the modern, I thought about who are the monsters in our society and they are us and I can show this by making monsters out of ourselves and mutating the human. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s style was also an influence for this, the way that his pieces are brought together in a disjointed manner and his haphazard expressive mark making brings his work together in an unsettling manner. Therefore by combining these ideas explored the way that I could create these monsters in a cut and paste collage manner similar to Hoch.

Whilst I was experimenting with this style and looking for pieces to stitch together I thought more about the actual pieces I was using as well as the composition. What sort of pieces should I use in order to communicate my ideas in a better manner? When looking for some eyes to use in a piece I came across a picture for a disease from a medical website. This brought up the idea of human illness and fuelled the image I initially had of this mutant human monster, therefore I began creating monsters with pictures of symptoms of human disease. This brought the idea of the creation of the monster more into the personal realm of humans, making me think what else is a disease in humanity? Sin. It is something which is hardwired into humans, although from my perspective, not necessarily sin but human desire and the animal drive as provided by Freud’s Psychoanalysis. The way that we all have an innate animal drive that needs to be subdued links to the concept of sin. And thus this brought me along the route of creating monsters that aren’t just our worst fears but how we are our worst fears, how we are vain, greedy, lazy, arrogant etc.