Running a gamut of garishness and ghoulishness from the grotesque to the giddy, it’s tempting to say that Jim Blanchard’s splendidly-produced mini Primitiva (Noreah/Brownfield, 2019) is something of a “sampler” of the artist’s wares — and while there’s no denying that it is, there’s also more to it than that. And while it’s admittedly not the long-form showcase afforded to the artist by Fantagraphics in books such as Visual Abuse or Meat Warp, that’s not necessarily a strike against it : in fact, the selection of acrylic and ink drawings herein seems hand-selected for its ability to really jump off these slick, glossy, high-production-value pages, which means the aesthetic focus here is —at least somewhat tight?
I realize full well that the beginning and ending of the preceding paragraph contradict each other, but let’s just go with it all the same, because deliriously contradictory (even self-contradictory) imagery has…
Through the Shattered Lens 