|
As you can plainly see, Paul J. Groendes is a very strange man. This may have something to do with the fact that he was riven from his childhood bosom home of San Francisco and now resides in rainy Portland, Oregon. The best he can say about his adopted hometown is, "At least it rains," much to the consternation of his long-suffering girlfriend, who prefers the tropics, but also must defend her own bosom city. Paul's eerily beautiful, changeling-like daughter resides with her doting mother in Salem, Oregon (not the one with the witches, alas).
Paul's horrifying art is not the product of a mental illness diagnosis, but stems from a life-long fascination with all things monster, moribund, and macabre. And movie. At the tender age of three he is said to have proclaimed the words "Elsa Lanchester!" with great gusto upon his first viewing of that film classic The Bride of Frankenstein. His taste developed early and he quickly transformed his obsessions into the world of art. By the time he was thirteen he had the whole collection of Aurora monster model kits, and after a family outing to see Invasion of the Body Snatchers, he quietly created three life-size papier-mache pods, one each for his mother, his father and his dog Missy, which he placed in the apartment for them to find after an evening away.
After several years of avoiding the inevitable, Paul finally laid down the mantle of the working world and attended to his gifts at the Academy of Art College of San Francisco, where he majored in Illustration. After graduating in 1997, Paul worked on the film Monkeybone as a sculptor and has been creating and selling paintings, sculptures and illustrations to both private and business clients. He has steadfastly avoided any job that has in its description the words, "Must be able to multi-task."
|
