MARS DISCOVERY DESERT ABDUCTION 2 WATCHED BY THE CREATURE HOLIDAY MIRAGE mindset is different because I’m running a business to support my life and family, but if you stripped all that away and it wasn’t a job, I would still enjoy drawing, coming up with an idea and executing it. That’s still just part of who I am. Birdy: Love that. It’s like with music. Someone can go to a Guitar Center and play all the riffs, but can they write a song? You have the talent to paint and ambition to learn, but you also tell a great story with your art. You have that in spades and it definitely stands out. How did you discover this aspect of storytelling, especially evolving as an illustrator into the painter you’re known for today. Pete Kornowski: For me, it started with picture-making, even from a really crude pencil sketch. As I got a little older, kids in school would ask me to draw specific people, or draw a scene that told a story. That’s how I think of my ideas now: what would be an absurd scene or situation, and how much of a story could I tell in a single flat image? How many things can I pack in there that fuel the imagination? I took every art class in high school, but I never painted much then. I got into painting later as an extension of bringing a drawing further to life with color, light, shadow, form and shape. It was a natural transition of taking a simple drawing and turning it into a more elaborate, colorful painting. One day I decided to paint, and next thing you know, that’s what I’m doing all day every day. Birdy: That’s good living. Other than art classes, you didn’t go down WE FORGOT MOTHMAN the traditional school path. Pete Kornowski: In high school, my art teacher was grooming me to go to Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, the big art college in Wisconsin. I applied and was accepted, but at 17 or 18 I didn’t really want more school. I just wanted to start my life. I look back now and realize if I had been saddled with loans right from the jump, that would have screwed me over for years, even if I had a good art school experience. I came out completely debt-free, working and still making art, and eventually built my business. I had a bunch of other jobs that had nothing to do with art for almost 20 years while still making stuff that whole time. I’m selftaught in the sense that I was always doing it, always exposed to other people doing stuff, and learning along the way from my own interests. When people ask how we built our business, there isn’t a playbook. It’s taking opportunities as they arrive, making the best decision with what’s in front of you, making the thing you want to make, seeing how it works out in the world, and adjusting to whatever opportunities come with it. Birdy: Do what you love and the rest will follow. When did you start getting into your paintings as they are now — with cryptid characters and the viewer seemingly walking into the middle of a scene? Pete Kornowski: It comes from drawing scenes, combined with the mystery aspect, legends, lore and cryptids. Those things were always interesting to me as a kid. Back in sixth grade, in the early days of the 23
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