Personal Manifesto- Nathan Mortensen

1.       I want to make made-up things interact with other made-up things. Almost like a celebration of made-up things.

2.       If I want to draw an apple, I don’t want to draw that apple. I want to draw my apple. And if my apple just so happens to look slightly different from that apple, or have a chainsaw volcano seeping out the top, so be it.

3.       Fighting, explosions, and battles are just as much art as dancing or martial arts. Heck, they’re called martial arts. Why do you think Sun Tzu’s book was called The Art of War? That’s not to say that conflict isn’t tragic, though. It is. So is some poetry.

4.       If I feel like making a chair, it won’t be some kind of regular chair. It will be a mighty throne of skulls or the command seat of a powerful warship. Regular chairs are made every day and we see them every day. We don’t see thrones and ships every day.

5.       If art is a form of expression, and experiencing and enjoying art is expressive, does experience and enjoyment=art?

6.       Comedy is art. It requires smart thinking and experience in everyday culture to really get someone to laugh and know why they’re laughing.

7.       I’ll draw my humans with four fingers, dot-eyes, and line-smiles if I please. I see them as my people; my subjects. They are my humans. Are they realistic? No. But they are mine, and that’s what I like about them.

8.       When creating something, think about the world it resides in. These factors you think of may easily affect what it looks like and how you put your feelings into it.

9.       We live in a culture where you can apparently do some nigh-blasphemous thing, but then call it “art” to get away with it. That’s how we justify ourselves checking out nude statues and paintings without feeling too weird about it. RIGHT?

10.   Picture your creations in 3D, rotating around and moving, maybe with some background music.

11.   Showing your art and talking about it can help you come up with what it means.

12.   You know how when too many people try to get through a door, absolutely no one can? That’s why I don’t talk much. I’ve got a lot of crap stuck in my mouth. So I let it leak out my brain instead through art.

13.   I’ve found that thinking about something while drawing something can help you remember that thing whenever you view it again. You can associate your creation with something memorable, and they don’t even have to be related.

14.   Organize your thoughts. You can organize other things if you want.

15.   Don’t let your art blatantly offend people, but do make them ask questions; get them to look weirdly; get them to make some confused remark; get them to look in awe or shock; get them to form opinions, so they can clash. Watch them clash. Clash over your creation. Let your creation gain an intelligence of its own. It’s your mind that creates your world. It’s other people that gets it out into the minds of others.