Vincent Drummond

This month's banner art has been created by the artist Vincent Drummond, aka The Sleepwalker. Readers may know him for his work with Love Love records designing cover art. He's recently relaunched his site http://www.iamthesleepwalker.com/ and we thought it would be nice to catch up with him to find out about the problem of defining genres in art, his inspirations and what his favourite activity on a Sunday is. 

Who are you?
I am Vincent the Fourth better known as The Sleepwalker

What do you do and where?
I mostly design album covers for bands I like.
If I'm not doing that I'm painting or drawing.
I do all this in my studio at the house I rent with my girlfriend in England.

Outside of this I like to hang out with my girlfriend, eating Sunday Roast at the pub, going for a long walk and then watching some horror films with her.

How would you describe the artistic and aesthetic style of your work?
Textured & Layered
Antique Shop Decay
Organic Industrial Sequences
Suffocating Emotional Turmoil
Skulls & Statues
Rorschach Ink Blot Tests
Typography & Dead Things

I just do what I do, however it feels right to do it. Which is a bit vague but I go more on instinct, emotion & feeling than conforming to any sort of preconceived "GRAPHIC DESIGN RULES".
A lot of my design work evolves organically, I like to build pieces in layers. Lots of textures and multiple, different images overlaid again and again.

Thick and tangible. Like remembering bits of a dream just after waking up.

People love to label things to help them understand them and most labels mean nothing to John Doe but he usually feels secure knowing there's a name for what he is looking at. He thinks, "I don't understand this at all but it has a name, a label, a definition by which to compartmentalize it. So that makes everything ok. I'm safe now. I will sleep well tonight."

Who or what are your inspirations?
Francis Bacon's "Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X"
Salvador Dali's "The Tempatation of St. Anthony"
Religious Imagery
Mike Mignola (Batman & Hellboy artist)
Sons of Nero
Jacob Bannon
The bands Converge & Knut
Light
Sleep Deprivation
Old Medical & Anatomy Journals & Encyclopedias 
Darren Aronofsky films
Michel Gondry
Terry Gilliam
Ashley Wood
Alex CF

Inspiration can be anything and everything.
Walk with your head up and your eyes open.
Notice everything.
Get your heart broken.
Listen to as many different styles of music as possible.
Always carry a notebook, pen and a camera.
Never, ever stop.

What's your favourite material to work with? Or do you work in a variety of mediums?
For design work I use;
Photographs I have taken / found
Textures I have photographed / scanned
Things I have drawn / painted and then scanned
Photoshop

For my paintings I use;
Acrylic
Water

For my drawings I use;
Biro

Have you ever been in a fight and if so, what happened?
No never. I've been started on and squared up to a lot of people but it has never descended into physical violence.

Many thanks to Vincent for taking the time to design our banner and for letting us interview him. A large collection of his work can be found at his site http://www.iamthesleepwalker.com/.