Courtesy photo

NAME: Matthew Scott Jennings, 27

BACKGROUND: A San Antonio native, Jennings earned his BFA at Texas State University, where he mostly created abstract paintings.

But years of intense work in studio art led to burnout. For three years, he stopped making art, instead satisfying his creative urges by drumming in the band Skullening.

Screen-printing T-shirts and posters for his band and others rekindled his interest in art. His work began going in a new direction when he made a zine, “Rat Tail,” of black-and-white comic horror drawings.

So Jennings decided to ditch classical work in favor of imagery influenced by comic book art, cult horror movies such as “Night of the Living Dead” and “Evil Dead” and fantasy movies such as “Clash of the Titans.”

CURRENTLY: “Severed,” which opens at FL!GHT Gallery on Saturday, June 14, features watercolors and screen printings of heads of monsters and other horror icons, including the Wolfman and the Grim Reaper.

Eyeballs dangle from eye sockets, brains bulge from the skull, and lips are parted to reveal pointed teeth. Each of the heads in the series of nine screen printings, titled “Hair Plague,” has some sort of grotesque hair affliction.
“It’s just stuff I was interested in when I was younger,” Jennings said. Accordingly, the work is executed in an almost childlike style.

The heads, sans bodies, are set against white backgrounds. Jennings said he was amused by the idea of viewers entering a gallery of portraits and seeing, not traditional oil paintings of illustrious subjects, but “a retarded cyclops.”

The exhibit also includes a painting of an open mouth mounted on the wall with a dozen stuffed, screen-printed heads lying on the floor below it.
“I think everyone can find some kind of humor in it,” Jennings said.

CHECK HIM OUT: The reception for “Severed” begins at 7 p.m. Saturday, June 14 at FL!GHT Gallery, 1906 S. Flores St. The exhibit runs through July 7.

Jessica Belasco | 210SA Contributor