I first came across John Broadley’s work in his Le Dernier Cri book, Wild for Adventure. Its abstract hilarity immediately struck a note a with me, and so I was gratified to recently learn that he makes his own books as well. His meticulous, gorgeous handmade hardcover books have won my heart, so I’m proud to feature them in our little store. Try them out. You won’t regret it. Here’s a little more info on John.

Can you tell me what your background in drawing is?

I studied illustration at Liverpool Polytechnic (now John Moore's University), graduating in 1991. I got published straight away thanks to a competition run by Elle magazine which led to some follow up work with the magazine. I continued illustrating for the next five-years before realising I wasn't happy with the what I was producing and after a last-minute change of mind at enrollment for an MA course at St Martins College of Art, I took a full-time job working the nightshift at a press cuttings agency, where I still work today - reading newspapers and summarising news stories. I have done the odd bit of free-lance work since then, but am much happier producing my own work.

Who are/were some of your artistic inspirations?

Edward Lear's nonsense verse / Ivor Cutler / Russian Constructivist Books /

English Broadsides & Chapbooks / Outsider Art

Illustrators - Edward Bawden / Eric Ravilious / John & Paul Nash / Edward Ardizonne / Jan Lenika / Bob Gill / Adam Wurtz /

Writers - Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Edgar Allen Poe / Richard Brautigan

Films - Expressionist and Universal horror, Max Fleischer, Kitchen Sink, 70s British Horror, Sherlock Holmes

What inspired you to make such complex intricately designed handmade books?

I had been making books whilst at Liverpool, and there pointed in the direction of David Hockney's 'Grimm's Fairy Tales' book and Ivor Cutler's work, which were both big influences at the time. When I gave up trying to make it as an illustrator, there was a sudden and massive outpouring of drawings; I basically sat down with a pile of school exercise books and my dip pen and produced about 100 drawings over two days. A book seemed like a good way of displaying these; the first one was actually called 'Wild For Adventure' which was taken from the title of a chapter in an old 'Picturegoer' annual. I later found out about the series of books produced at that start of the 20th century by Russian artists like Khlebnikov, Larionov, and N.Goncharova, whose titles, such as 'A Slap in the Face of Public Taste' and 'Worldbackwards' really summed up my liberated mood now free of having to draw for a living. I then started producing books with fanciful titles such as 'Elsewhere and Elsewhen', 'Lock your doors', and 'Five Zillion Miles from here', which were all just collections of drawings, before returning to the 'WFA' title again for the first book of strips.

Can you explain the ideas behind Wild For Adventure? What were you after?

Primarily I was trying to convey a sense of the absurd, I wanted the books to be totally useless, without a point. Eventually they evolved into the comic strip format. Once the drawings are presented in this way, you tend to read them as if they are sequential. The scenes are random, but over the course of a book, there is a rhythm, the reader draws connections between the subject matter.

I'm currently working on 12-panel pages rather than three, and I think this works more successfully, the disorienting effect is stronger. A major aspect of it is the cut and paste element of different eras and styles. I'm trying to capture something, but am not sure what exactly it is - it's part nostalgia, part anger, and part melancholia, but for what ends I don't really know. But I find working in a kind of ignorance produces more satisfying results than on those occasions when I think I've finally cracked it.