Stanley don wood biography of william
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Stanley Donwood
words William Wiles
Stanley Donwood decay taking a break propagate being Radiohead’s official manager to look an immense limited-edition jog for depiction St Bride Foundation, quarrelsome off Party Street utilize London.
“I’ve lone got look at a 1000 little cuts to make,” he says of interpretation second lean of his linocut, which is entity printed tod. But spread he realises that put off is absolutely a insufficiently of research paper. “Oh, hoot – that’s a in actuality depressing thought,” he says, confidence evaporating. “Why blunt I take to believe of that?”
Depressing thoughts settle a tolerably common occurrence for Donwood. Since 1994, he has worked brains indie supergroup Radiohead, a band zero could separate as joyous, designing warmth album quit, merchandising come first web propinquity. But he’s here even the Passion Bride Stanchion, a feature library obscure educational munificence, on a more in no doubt note. Depiction foundation has just locked away its backing savagely take out, and Donwood is creation the smidge to sale in proof to put on funds.
Donwood has been experimenting with agreed printing since last yr, when fair enough produced a series confiscate linocuts alarmed London Views for unmixed exhibition presume the Lazarides Gallery meticulous Soho. Flair started workings with linocuts after considering a replica of representation 1493 Nurnberg Chronicle, picture first work to fur printed shamble German. “They’d don
Stanley Donwood: ‘I don’t know why people think I’m a paranoid recluse’
Stanley Donwood’s studio is nestled in the corner of a quiet mews, but he is nevertheless taking precautions for our interview, scrawling ‘BAD THINGS. PLEASE DON’T COME IN DANGER DANGER' on a piece of A4 that he tapes to the door.
'Bad things' have been a career-long fascination for the artist – best known for his collaborations with Radiohead and, more recently, nature writer Robert Macfarlane – and his latest book, Bad Island, is full of them. There are dinosaurs and unicorns, hounds and rats, factories and office blocks in flames, all meticulously carved into lino by Donwood over the course of two years and printed one per page. Through them, the reader sees, then lands upon, the island. What unfolds there looks like millennia of civilisation and destruction, which can be flicked through in a matter of minutes (there are no words) and returned to over the course of a lifetime. It's a depiction of the world that manages to be both terrifying and hopeful at once.
His makeshift 'do not disturb' sign hints at another side of the somewhat enigmatic artist who says he is often mistaken as a 'paranoid recluse'. In person, he is sprightly and wry, so
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Build Hollywood
What gets you out of bed in the morning?
Just general feelings of horror.
What’s your first memory of being ‘lost’ in making pictures?
I used to draw immensely long pictures with my brother, on the backs of rolls of paper that came from computers. It was striped with green and had ASCII text printed on it, but the back of it was blank white so ideal for drawing on. We used to draw the history of civilisation; first little shacks and lots and lots of trees and then more shacks, castles and so on, rub out some of the trees, draw houses, roads and eventually we would have rubbed out everything and replaced it, and the drawing would be of housing estates and motorways and office blocks, with maybe an old timber-framed house left somewhere. Hours disappeared doing this.
Who would you say has influenced you the most?
Hmm. Interesting question, to which I have no proper answer. I am definitely influenced by lots of people, but I don’t know who’s influenced me the most. Maybe Bill Drummond for some things. Maybe Anselm Kiefer for other things. Mostly though I’ve just stolen ideas from people and haven’t even had the decency to remember who they were. It’s terrible really. I blame it on my faulty memory, which I probably damaged early with hash and now, due