Embrace Your Inner Monster

If you were to suggest that I'm a little bit obsessed with monsters, then you'd be right. It's also true to say that my wife finds this a rather less than endearing character trait. Earlier today when I told her there was some spare change on the shelf 'next to the trolls' she sarcastically noted that I really was helping her live in the house of her dreams (she blogs about interior design and is many degrees of class more refined than I).

I actually think a minor (ok, major) obsession with monsters, with the grotesque, the macabre, the unsettling, the weird and the twisted, is a very healthy thing indeed. These are such central aspects of our imaginative and creative selves that we are taught to forget and encouraged to abandon in the process that is supposedly called 'growing up'.

I recently saw some amazing paintings (copied in this post) created by an artist who attempted to make 'realistic' versions of children's drawings. The way these amplify the young imagination is not only breathtaking, it also illustrates perfectly how the monstrous is the ever-present, undeniable, shadow aspect of humanity. Embrace your inner monster, I say. But do try to remember to keep the wife happy too.