That’s an odd thing, talking about how the idea of a waiting audience might motivate an artist, because certainly that never played a part in my efforts or inspiration in making sculpture - because I wasn’t sure anyone would see it. Or if they did, it would be a small number of people. I think when I was doing The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, I had that same feeling; but because I discovered there was an audience for The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, I anticipated there would be one for the next book I wrote.
I think that created a little bit of motivation for me, but I think that actually thinking about your audience is poisonous to the art process it truly contaminates it. If you think, “Oh, they’re really going to like this
” If you ever hear a voice like that in your ear while you’re drawing, it’s time to put down the pencil, because there should be no “they” at the art table. There should only be one person at the drawing table, and that’s you.
And so even though I realized that I might have a larger audience for Jumanji, I think it created a kind of excitement in me, maybe. But I’ve always tried to guard against the idea of having an audience have any effect on me as a creator
And the story for Jumanji grew out of, once again, a visual idea, in the same way that Gasazi grew out of this idea of a boy chasing a small, white dog through a topiary garden.
In Jumanji, I was interested in what I refer to as kind of a cognitive dissonance disparate things juxtaposed. And in the case of Jumanji, it’s the very comforting and secure idea of these domestic interiors. But there’s something that doesn’t belong there, which is, namely, a python, or a group of wild monkeys. And I loved the idea of the wild jungle inside the safety of the house or, what we associate with the safety of the house. So, that was the visual theme I had in mind.
