Artist’s profile: Joel Bisaillon
Joel Bisaillon Gallery
CJMT
First, please tell us a bit about yourself.
JB
I’m a 50-some-odd-year Canadian boy who still doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up. Born in Niagara Falls my family moved around a bit until we landed in Brantford Ontario.
I made friends like any kid would by finding the other kids who were also kinda picked on by bullies and grouped with them. One of them was very influential in my creative life. A few of us would have lunches in the English teachers classroom. We would un-knowingly engage in an Exquisite corpse illustration competition on the chalkboard for lunches on end and this guy would focus with such detail it amazed me. As a joke I usually just drew a box around the scribble and autographed it “Pablo Picasso”.
Eventually we became gamers (D&D and such) and aired our creative juices in that environment seasoned with Heavy Metal. World-building is a massive utensil in the toolbelt of any creative. Being given the permission to be creative is the primary thing roleplaying has given to me.
CJMT
What are your primary inspirations?
JB
Going to the public library I used to read a lot. At first I gobbled down all the L. Frank Baum books followed by C. S. Lewis, a little Anne McCaffrey, Stewart Cowley with his Terran Trade Authority universe, and eventually Alfred Hitchcock horror anthologies. Dragons and space wrecks and Ghosts oh my. I never thought I would leave the library.
My friend’s brother used to have a lot of Heavy Metal magazines (Métal hurlant ripoffs), I think a few copies of Weird Tales that were published a decade earlier, and some of those Warren Publishing magazines like Eerie, Creepy, Mad, and Vampirella. We snuck them away when we could, like young boys do, finding dad’s porn magazines for the first time. (That was a thing in the 70’s/80’s.) As 10-14-year-olds, we knew we shouldn’t be reading this stuff but that’s half the reason it was thrilling.
The artists I found in these books have nurtured me for years: Frank Frazetta, Chris Moore, Angus McKie, Enki Bilal, Moebius, and H. R. Giger. They’ve led me to research others such as dystopian Surrealist Zdzisław Beksiński or the gothic horror of Brom.
CJMT
Do you have a “grand vision” for the future?
JB
To make a basic living as an artist. Nothing like “making bank!!” but enough to break free of being a cook. At 50, I’m tired of coming home with knicks and burns, sore feet and a bad back all with the stress levels just below what nurses endure. The high-pressure and fast-paced nature of the industry as well as staff shortages, lack of time, lack of daylight and limited budget really beat us to a pulp. I’m not suggesting our work is as important, but most cooks/chefs can attest that the demands far outweigh income.
CJMT
What have you found most challenging in your creative work?
JB
Oddly others’ (clients) direction of their vision. It’s not so much that I become upset about what a client wants but how I interpret it. I recently (at age 50) was diagnosed with dyslexic. Doctors explained to me that it’s often mis-explained as word blindness but in reality, a full learning disability that I have unknowingly adapted coping mechanisms for. Due to this, I have to ask the client different forms to get to the same description so I understand why a client may find this daunting. It’s not so much that I can’t read well but my inability to focus on what I’m reading as I tend to hyperfocus on one aspect and bypass the proper interpretation. This takes my muddled and tainted understanding of a scene and unfortunately feeds it to the innocent client who just wants an image to accompany their work.
CJMT
What’s next for you?
JB
Moving from Ontario, Canada to Houston, Texas. I have a few personal projects I want to get out the door, but this move will take up the better part of a year while we sell off half our stuff, scout apartments, traverse American bureaucracy, and hardest of all, harness-train our cats.
CJMT
Is there anything else you would like to tell our readers about?
JB
I have a grimdark medieval fantasy webcomic I’m very slowly working on called Eirgsmoth about the everyday corrupt and loathsome denizens of a failing city-state focused on cults, gangs, nobility, and innocence lost. It can be found at: https://fables.pro/a/series/eirgsmoth
I am also working on another webcomic called Sky-realms of the Celestial Sea which is much more upbeat directed to a younger audience about two children and their cat who go on a dream-quest to find their father across the infinite skies of the Celestial Sea in a flying gondola. A rather fantastical journey in the vein of L. Frank Baum and Lewis Carroll. This isn’t quite ready yet for showing. I do have a few pieces for concept art but nothing substantial.
I am a self-taught freelance digital artist from Canada who focuses on dark and dramatic, bold and colorful imagery with a flair for the fantastical. One can see I appreciate the darker aspects of fiction genres holding close to horror and fantasy. This could be a throwback from my old days playing P&P RPGs. I have over the years worked with several renowned roleplaying, tabletop gaming, and publishing companies trying to bring the unreal to life.” https://www.artstation.com/umbraludus/ https://www.instagram.com/umbraludus/