Doug McQueen

Doug McQueen is an artist, musician, great-guy, and all around badass who can make just about anything he wants to. He makes paintings, comics, masks, cartoons, sculptures, and songs, drives trucks and bikes through crazy traffic, gives tattoos, and often prepares dinner from scratch.

Doug and I met when we were teenagers living in Des Moines. From the jump we basically decided to be best friends. In the 15 years I've known him, Doug has never failed to impress me with his singular imagination, innate skill, and crazy prolific production. While I have long admired his work, only rarely have I thought to ask him questions about how it gets made, which made this interview very exciting for me.

Almost all of the art displayed here is taken from sketchbooks that Doug has given me over the last 10 years. I have spent hours looking through them and trying to get inside Doug's brain. No matter how many times I look through them I always find a new thing to stare at or something to make me laugh. They are so dense and amazing that it was nearly impossible to select just a few images from them to show, so I may have to add more later.

(Notes: Clicking on any image will bring up a larger version. All rights reserved to the artist, of course.)


How has working as an art handler affected the way you think about or feel about art?

Doug McQueen: Having worked in the bowels of galleries throughout NYC, I can see how the image that this city casts with its art-world workings could
lead bourgeoning artists to believe that climbing the evil, lizard-ladder of the corporate art world is the ONLY way to go. Artists of any quality will chart their own course to recognition. There’s so much decentralization in the art world today. Communities all over the world are more able to start their own scenes due to communication technologies. If the NYC art world needs you (rather than the other way around) and they come begging on their knees, well...all the better.

You have the skills to produce everything from photo-real paintings to cartoons to amazing abstract multimedia assemblages. What's your preferred style of work and what about it makes it so?

My current (and seemingly eternal) quest is to find a place where all these elements of painting and drawing meet. I find that as sit down in the studio for a day of work, I need these different elements to keep me going. Drawing cartoons leads me to tattoo flash, then leading to representationalism, leading to idealism, leading to abstraction, leading to collage. Each stylistic change is like plugging my brain into a different electrical socket. I’m always working towards a meeting point for all of them.

You do a lot of cartoon work and comics. Do you prefer single-frame comics or longer narrative pieces?

The single-frame comics usually come from some situation or quotation (real or fabricated) that has entered my conscious brain. I’ll get an image in my brain that I feel crystallizes said quotation and try to nail it; directly from brain to page. Currently, I’m finding longer narratives extremely challenging. I’m attempting to write dialogue first, and then, like I said, crystalize each frame as I see it according to the dialogue. The problem being that I’m writing dialogue way ahead of what I’m drawing. The writing comes a bit easier at this point in time. Basically, I’m effortlessly creating a ton of work for myself.
















When you have recurring characters in multiple comics, are those characters there simply to serve as visual /storytelling devices of the moment, or do you think of the characters having a persistent personality? Are they just fun easy to draw?

It’s a good chance that familiar faces in my work have a history. If only in my brain. Characters that I doodled out of boredom in my 8th grade math class still come to life in my sketchbooks today. Their looks have developed over the years, and possibly gotten worse, depending on what kind of trials and tribulations I’ve put them through. By now, these characters are carrying baggage I never dreamt of bestowing on them at the time of their creation. I still regularly create fresh characters that come out of that same 8th grade brain. The process is: think of something fun and easy to draw and maybe it’ll lead to some idea or attitude you’re trying to convey, or understand. However, If I end up drawing some new character more than just once, it’s a pretty sure bet that they will soon join my roster of friends/fiends on paper. Then they’re stuck with ME.

When starting a piece, do you envision things and they try to recreate the idea or do you start drawing and let things evolve? If you are trying to reproduce an exact idea, how accurate do you feel you are?

Over the years, I have come to realize that there is a very specific amount compromise that must be traded between my brain and my hand. I feel that the closer I get to a 50/50 balance between what my brain wants and what my hand can produce, the more I clear up that mystic channel between what I see in my thoughts and what becomes reality (or unreality) on the page.

Do you have any coded or hidden symbolism in your drawings? Or is a wolf's head just a wolf's head?

If I code or symbolize anything in my work, it’s probably pretty obvious to the viewer what’s being communicated. I feel the need to make extremely direct work. I think that urge comes from my love of blunt forms of expression, things like punk rock and graffiti. A forty-seven second song? Not much room to hide any subliminal messages. A huge, illegally painted picture halfway up some barren, 7-story wall? Everything’s out in the open. And by the way, how the f**k did homeboy/girl get up there?














You use a lot of humor in your stuff. Do you get a laugh out of your funny stuff? Do you think that people fully appreciate the craft and design of a good piece of funny art?

Derek Bostrum from the Meat Puppets said the best thing ever: “My sense of humor is the only thing I take seriously.” Depending on how it’s done, making someone laugh can be the highest form of art. My ultimate goal is to make someone laugh, and then in the moment of euphoria that comes after, hit them with something deep that resonates like an echoed dub-beat snare-tap through the eternity of endless space.

You were living in New Orleans and were displaced by Hurricane Katrina. How has that affected your work?

In NYC I haven’t found as many opportunities to make masks and costumes. These were prime elements of culture in NOLA. Different events and holidays all year round made mask-making a desirable skill to have. And I exercised it liberally. I can’t say how many masks I gave out during Holloween and Mardi Gras to friends and strangers who were lacking costumes. In NYC, people don’t dress up as much. It’s not as ingrained in the culture. Most New Yorkers don’t wanna have to take the subway home from a party or ball looking like a mystic mountain ram (although I can’t see why).

You make such varied items -- books, drawings, sculptures, photos -- what would be your ideal way to show / display your art?

I need to find a way that I can load a shotgun full of a few months work and blast it at a wall. That would produce the desired effect. Plus that would reduce my off-work, unpaid art-handling hours.

In your comics and sketchbooks you draw yourself a lot, often in awkward or self deprecating ways. Is this a way of journaling, of nervous energy, is it like a visual "talking to yourself?"

Drawing myself in horrible/awkward situations is the funniest thing for me. When I really want to loosen up my brain and try to shake off all the day to day stuff that fogs up my creativity, I’ll draw myself looking stupid. Food running down my chin, getting caught in a ritual blood letting, crashing on my bike; I become my own ultimate comic relief actor. Plus, when people see the drawings, they go “oh, shit! That’s your head with a hyena body?” And then they laugh, too.

You draw amazing caricatures / cartoons of people. When you are drawing a cartoon of a real person, how do you select what elements to include / exaggerate / emphasize?

Whatever elements pop out the most glaringly. You’ve got to be incredibly cruel. If I’m working from watching folks on the sidewalk, I’ll usually look at a person for a solid 2 or 3 seconds and then go straight to the page. Whatever I draw first when I look at the page are the features that hit me the hardest. If I draw your scarf first, well, it’s because it was obnoxious, or the way you were rockin’ that fuggin’ thing successfully. I can base the rest of your facial features off that memory. It helps to have more time, but even then it’s basically the same process.

Whose work do you enjoy /envy?

Allison Hester’s comedy infused drawings will roll you over, and then goose you. Everyone should see Jeffrey Beebe’s work. This guy can draw for miles, and talk about symbolism! Teddy Riederer trashes guitars and then makes ‘em work again. Plus, he’s a romantic oil painter. Jade Townsend wants to destroy high society so we can all ride bikes, camp out in the dirt and drink whiskey together. Why are so few on board with that? Mr. Timothy Wherle is currently, among other things, drawing some owls for John Zorn (no shit). Stare at his work and feel yr brain explode. Do it, now!

Any shout outs?

Nah. Everybody I wanna shout-out knows who they are.

See more of Doug's work at dougmcqueen.com. Thanks Doug! Thanks Reader!