Skinny Gaviar is a talented graphic artist. That much is clear. But first and foremost, Skinny considers killing to be his art, and to that end he has murdered hordes of homeless, often using their dismembered bodies as models for his twisted Photoshop creations. This adds a real sense of urgency to his growing body of work, as with each completed piece, the viewer desperately hopes that Skinny’s homicidal urges will be discovered and tamed before he is forced to kill again.

Or so he would have you believe.

In truth, Skinny has lent his uniquely Russian perspective to various pieces of fiction, articles, posters, album covers, and features as a freelancer and a frequent contributor to Verbicide. Cheerfully dark, his sensibilities have always found a way to tickle my funny bone. It’s a nearly impossible feat. And for that alone he deserves attention.

You’ve contributed to Verbicide for a long while. How and why did you first decide to get involved?

I guess it was about three years ago when I decided to try my luck as a freelance illustrator. I came across your website, read some articles and liked the whole thing. I sent you an email and, boom, you responded and asked me to illustrate a story by Hunter S. Thompson. That’s how it started.

I know you have a particular passion for creating art that references music. Do you tend to listen to music when you create? What type of music do you prefer?
I love music. I listen to it all the time whether I’m drawing or not. It helps a lot. I love silence too, but it makes me feel paranoid. As a matter of fact, I have certain favorites to accompany the creative process. They include Frank Zappa, Pat Metheny, Keith Jarrett, Rush, Faith No More and Meshuggah. It might sound odd, but a fair amount of my artwork was created while listening to Richard Pryor.

Deciding to be an artist isn’t easy since it’s not a very practical way to make a living. How did you get started as an artist? Who started you on the artistic path and what drives you to keep going?
I was bored. I had an office job that was staring at a monitor for eight hours a day pretending you’re doing something. Instead of pretending I began doing artwork. The very first pieces looked horrible, but eventually it all got better. Then I quit the office job (which only taught me how to use a fax machine) and became a full-time artist (if it makes any sense).

I have two main art influences — Andy Ewen, who is an amazing ink artist and a good friend of mine, and (a cliche) Salvador Dali. I also like Ian Stevenson and Bob London a lot. Oh, and Richard Kern. He’s a photographer but his approach is very artistic. There were three early 90s computer quest games that taught me a lot, especially about the use of colors — Sam and Max Hit The Road, Day Of The Tentacle and Simon The Sorcerer. Those were great. But then the filthy 3D technology eclipsed the charm of pixels.

Nothing drives me to keep going. It’s not that I do it for the sake of something. I have an itch and I scratch, metaphorically speaking.

Tell me about your artistic process. How do you create most of your work? Why do you seem to gravitate toward such dark themes?
Most of the works are based on photos. Photoshop gets a bad name these days. People think of it as a tool for making hilarious pet pictures with witty comments and stuff like that. Each time I say “Photoshop” to somebody, I can feel some sort of disapproval floating in the air. But Photoshop is almighty and mysterious. I’m still unaware of most of its powers. I print my stuff on canvas and paper too.

Anyway when I first started doing my art, it looked like some sort of extreme retouching. It still does now but with much more hand drawing involved. And initially the colors were the primary, but now it’s about shapes as well.

I never know what the result is going to be like and that’s my favorite part. Stream of consciousness or whatever they call it. And that’s why I prefer doing my own stuff as opposed to magazine illustrations that have contextual boundaries.

Dark themes are bold. They come out naturally. Cut-off limbs, blood, ugly faces — they look beautiful with the right colors. Especially blood. You can improve any image by adding blood. It just works. Try it.

But it’s not all creepy. I have nice ones too.

Have you ever considered creating something more narrative, like a comic or an illustrated book?
You know, each image is a story itself. To be honest, I never understood the appeal of comic books. They’re neither books that make you use imagination and create images of your own nor animated films that are easily absorbed yet visually and sonically expressive. For instance, I really like your Abstract Fantasy cartoons. They’re sick but in a very attractive way. I think they’d work perfectly as standalone images. But it’s just me. Plus, I’m from Russia. Comic books were never big here.

Every piece of mine has its beginning and its end if you know what I mean. So I can’t possibly think of series of frames following one plot. Yet, I fancy the idea of making a book. Plot and theme free. Just a bunch of unrelated images. A compilation of visual stories, if you will.

You are somewhat ambitious with your projects. What is an artistic goal that you’d like to accomplish? What projects do you have coming up?
I don’t think there’s anything ambitious. I mean, just like any other artist I want to do art and make a living by that for as long as necessary. I’m not sure if I have any goals at all. I just let it come out of me.

Project-wise, the book is actually a good idea. Maybe even a collaboration with a writer or a bunch of them. That’d be cool. I don’t like obvious concepts. It’s like when you look at something and realize it is so ballless and soulless that most people will dig it. Like Lost, or Banksy, or iPad. I just do what I do and I hope it’s not that obvious.

Skinny is open to the public.  Feel free to love him at www.skinnygaviar.com or his facebook page