Eye Candy: MAT PRINGLE

Our ongoing quest to keep your ocular cavities as well fed as your aural ones has led us to much scouring of the internet. Throughout our search we’ve been inflicted with a passion for manic attention to detail and the one artist we kept coming back to was Mat Pringle, aka Mr Naga; plus he draws sharks. And sharks are possibly the most awesome of all aquatic predators. How would you describe your art, to the uneducated? Fantastical figurative illustration with occasional epic attention to detail.  I work in the mediums of pen and ink, paint and screen-printing. How did you get into art? I spent a lot of my childhood drawing dinosaurs and guns and making stuff so that desire to create has always been there but I lost momentum at college when all art seemed to involve was painting a bowl of fruit which bored the tits off me - not much scope for dinosaurs and guns in a bowl of fruit.  I've always drawn directly from my head and any kind of observation seemed like a distraction from the actual drawing lines bit - it's only recently I've taken to 'referencing' a bit more but it still feels like cheating. Who are your inspirations (be it artists, musicians, authors, film directors, philosophers, etc)? In an attempt not to just list a ton of stuff I love, I genuinely think it’s people around me who inspire me - my step-dad Tony was always pushing me to do something with art and he passed away in 2007 just as I was starting to get somewhere and as much as he often didn’t know what to make of my illustrations - he inspired me to keep at it. More literally children’s book illustrators are a big inspiration – Maurice Sendak, John Vernon Lord, Edward Gorey, Stephen Cartwright and Abner Graboff. Generally speaking I’m inspired by comic, zine and poster illustrators like Travis Millard, Tom Gauld, Brian Ralph, Nigel Peake, Jay Ryan, Michael Sieben, Deth P Sun, Mike Mignola, Craig Thompson and Drew Millward. Where do you go for inspiration? Beyond the realms of the inter-web and books I just try and get out and see stuff (ironic given my whole not ‘observing’ stance on illustration) and do stuff which sounds simplistic, but that’s how it works for me so riding my bike all over London, seeing bands play, going to exhibitions, spending an afternoon at Print Club, boozing with friends.  I'm inspired by everything and yet nothing specific at the same time. Apologies for sounding like an art cock. Failing that I look on OMG Posters and copy something verbatim. Have you ever been to fabric? Not for a long time as a result of being perpetually skint and more significantly (perpetually) old but I was well tempted by the prospect of seeing The Gaslamp Killerthe other month.  If you'd thrown in Andy Votel and the B Music collective plus a live set by Animal Collective and Yeasayer I would've been there.  This is how the interview works right?  I get to choose your line ups for the next couple of weeks? http://matpringle.blogspot.com/