Xpress’ very fine illustrator and designer Nathanael Roney designed the art for a Maryland blues fest, and will show his work in town, too. The Hagerstown, Md. Herald-Mail has an interview with him.
Some excerpts:
He doesn’t look to others for artistic cues.
“I never got that close with people in general,” Roney says. “I still don’t. I look at art, but I don’t identify the relationship that closely with other artists or other artists in history. I have a general appreciation for it. I see what I like, and I like what I like. Music has always inspired it. I don’t want to come across as too uninvolved, but there is a sense of that, I think.”
…
His works lead double lives. Sort of.
They are both ink-on-paper drawings in black and white or have colors. The Blues Fest poster is an example:
“A lot of the aesthetic of the drawing lends itself to design — throwing it into a computer, slapping in color and making it more of a functional piece as opposed to a drawing on a piece of paper,” Roney says. “It just took natural flight into that direction. It can find its energy still, post production. It can be put to use. It’s a living tool, no matter what you do with it or do to it.”
Much Respect.