Interview : Innsmouth Free Press

Work : Will draw eldritch abominations for money. My preference is black and white pen & ink, but have been known to do the odd digital piece, and sculpture.

Currently : Putting together a book of my drawings entitled Called by Cthulhu : The Eldritch Art of Dave Carson, with an introduction by Neil Gaiman.

Recently : Cover art for H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life by Michel Houellebecq (Orion, UK), cover and interior art for the Reader's Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos (Gakken, Japan). Artwork also featured in the documentary film The Eldritch Influence : The Life, Vision and Phenomena of H.P.Lovecraft (Hermetic Productions, USA), A Lovecraft Retrospective : Artists Inspired by H.P.Lovecraft (Millipede Press, USA), Digital Horror Painting Workshop (Ilex, UK) .

Past :  I've been involved in horror and Lovecraftian art since the 1970's. My first professionally published work was in The Encyclopedia of Horror (Octopus Books, UK, 1981). Contributed artwork to Shadows Over Innsmouth, Goth Chic: A Connoisseur's Guide to Dark Culture (Plexus, UK), Book of Dark Wisdom magazine, Fighting Fantasy : Beneath Nightmare Castle (Puffin Books, UK), Horrors Beyond, Horrors Beyond II (Elder Signs Press, USA), Fear magazine, the Dark Voices series from Pan Books, The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales (Robinson, UK), White Dwarf magazine, The Giant Book of Fantasy and The Supernatural (Parragon, UK). Conceived, co-edited (with Stephen Jones) and illustrated H.P.Lovecraft's Book of Horror (Barnes & Noble, USA), and many Chaosium publications. Past clients include Weirdbook Press, Dagon Press, Blitz Verlag, Interzone magazine, Palladium Books, Robinson Books, Nyctalops magazine, James Van Hise, Necronomicon Press, Chaosium, Games Workshop, Pan Books, Dead Letter Press , Whispers magazine, Octopus Books, Elder Signs Press, Fantasy Tales magazine, Kadath magazine , Rosemary Pardoe's Ghosts & Scholars magazine, Dave Reeder's Skeleton Crew magazine.

HPLHS Bibliophile Cthulhu T-shirt available now. Support the H.P.Lovecraft Historical Society and buy one !

My H.P.Lovecraft poster (above), drawn in 1979, has proven to be quite popular and has been widely reproduced, appearing in publications as diverse as The Encyclopedia of Horror from Octopus Books, Fortean Times, The Observer's Review supplement, and the cover of H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life from Orion.

I had one of the posters delivered to the great horror and fantasy writer Fritz Leiber at The 5th World Fantasy Convention in Providence, Rhode Island back in 1979, and he was kind enough to send me this note.

Some comments by professionals in the fields of horror and fantasy :

FRITZ LEIBER

"It's surely a most handsome artwork by Dave Carson - perhaps a scion of Great Cthulhu... "

HARRY O. MORRIS

"I don't know of any artist who can touch the heights (depths?) of decaying and liquiscent horror in visual form as you do..."

BRIAN LUMLEY

"Dave is an absolute master of black & white illustration...I've been known to call him a 'Master of Tentacular Pustularity', and it's been my pleasure to have him illustrate quite a few of my stories..."

KARL EDWARD WAGNER

"Carson sure does like to draw tentacles and talons and fangs and pincers and bristles and spidery legs and rotting flesh and crumbling bones and oozing sores and ... brings a ghoulish enthusiasm to his work that has lately been tempered with maturing draftsmanship. The nightmare monsters and corpses of his earlier work still creep across his pages as nastily as ever, only now they carry more conviction. Either Carson has rapidly increased his technical skills as an artist, or else, as I suspect, he now uses live models "

NEIL GAIMAN

"Was delighted to see that my old friend Dave Carson has a web site - If you've ever wondered what H.P. Lovecraftian things really look like - I mean, really look like - you should go and inspect Dave's art. I bought a picture called THE KISS from him in 1986, which my wife, seventeen years later, will still not allow to be hung anywhere in the house where she might have to see it, so it is only ever hung on walls she never looks at..."

ROBERT RANKIN

" ...I never lost touch with his work, I was amazed by it all those years ago and I remain equally amazed today. And I'd keep seeing it, in books and magazines and even being bootlegged on the occasional T shirt..."