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| Sharaya Brooks is Super Cool, Yeah! |
| by Laura 3/1 |
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Sharaya Brooks' technique is so honed, one can hardly tell the photograph is a doctored image. The subjects themselves look like the unfortunate victims of a sideshow, or the nightmarish purveyors of gloom and doom, too captivating to set aside, too real to linger on.
What exactly does the phrase dark art mean to you?
I'd say that dark art has a lot of different styes but anything that has a dark undertone or macabre print to it. Anything weird, that you would consider gothic.
What goes into creating one of your prints?
My work is digital, photo manipulation using Paintshop Pro. It's hard finding stock photos so I try to take my own as much as I can. I'll look around or royalty free photos or photos that aren't managed so I can do what I want with them. Usually I'll take visions of nightmares I've had, that I feel are really creepy, or I'll even mix creepiness with cuteness or ugliness and beauty. Sometimes I want it to turn out pretty and other times I hope for a mess. I want people to get freaked out when they see my work.
Why don't you ever take the hard copies of old photographs and paint right onto them? Are you formally trained?
I have no formal training, no. I've actually found quite a few photos at yard sales and thrift stores. I found sets of old photographs in an abandoned building I crawled into one time and have thought about painting right onto the pictures but its so much easier to manipulate them digitally. I'll probably experiment a little more in the future, or when I can afford better supplies. Mia Makila does that a lot and she's one of my favorite artsts. The times I have painted on the surface though, I haven't liked them so I throw them away.
Where are you currently living and how does it have influence over your work?
I'm living in Lexington, Kentucky, and I just moved back into my mother's house. There's really not a lot going on around here. It is kind of nice living in the country, for my style of work, it's convenient to have the woods around so I can find dead animals. I'll take and sterilize pieces of them and use it in some of the art I hand-make. I have an old photograph of a little girl and I scratched out her eyes then glued on these crow legs as her arms. It's so tiny, I haven't been able to scan it in yet.
Has anyone ever had a negative response to your work?
Oh yeah! One woman, I tried to write her, show her my work, and she wrote back saying "I'm sorry, I can't add you as a friend because my children were in the room when I was trying to look at your web page and they got really scared." I didn't know whether to think that was really awesome or really bad.
Have you ever thought of creating a body of work that was a little more mainstream?
No. I didn't really think that people would like my work. Apparently they are and I keep receiving good responses, so I'm just riding it out and seeing what happens.
Are you ever haunted by your work?
Sometimes. I did one piece - 'Dread the Hat Man', and I scared myself making it because it was one of the most terrifying images I was afraid of when I was a child. A big shadowy figure with lit up eyes starring at you. I was in the house alone, in the dark and started thinking, what if I turn around and see him?
Do you ever stop thinking?
My thoughts come in waves. I can go a month without motivation, I just don't have it all the time. I try to keep my ideas written down for when I do get that spurt of get up and do it. Its hard to keep myself going all the time because while I have so many ideas in my head, there's other responsibilities to deal with.
Tell me about three influences.
I'd say Laurie Lipton, Mia, Makila who has helped me out a lot and been such a sweetheart and Lori Early.
More of Sharaya's work here.
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