Artist Interview: Patricio Betteo

Patricio Betteo is an internationally-acclaimed illustrator, cartoonist, and concept artist based in Mexico. The artist's images are used with permission.

Your body of work is massive and diverse; how did you end up working on so many projects and in so many capacities?

Most of it is explained by my personality. When focusing on a project for a long time, or even a brief and intense session, I always feel the urge to try something else to break the boredom...really! For example, if I'm focusing on cartoon monsters, then I'm certainly forgetting the pleasure of doing weird dreamscapes...and after doing dreamscapes for a while, I'll start to miss the excitement of making an abstract painting, or a pin-up girl, etc.

I believe the most versatile artists are the ones who are quickly bored by doing the same thing over and over, even if they are improving on a specific task. I always prefer expansive growth in every direction, rather than a "vertical" learning process. I really admire the artists who can do the latter, but I don't enjoy it.

What inspires creation when you're facing a blank page?

In my experience, it's impossible to get inspired from an empty page. I'll just make a line somewhere on the page in order to break the silence, and if nothing happens, I put another mark on the paper, and so on. The power of pure imagination, inspired by shapes and colors, is such a primitive mechanism that any one can do this through any media or discipline.

Having already created so much art; what keeps you making more?

It's probably my notion of art as a way of traveling without moving, which is useful since I'm mostly an indoors kind of guy. I see art as a way of connecting with lots of people when I'm not exactly a party animal, and being that I consider the brain to be the greatest miracle in the universe, I easily find comfort in brainy, solitary activities like drawing. If the solitary mind is where I spend most of my time, why not make a really big playground of it?

Of course, my everyday work of making illustration for clients also keeps me going. In the early days of my career, around ten years ago, I was exposed to many branches of commercial illustration: business magazines, children books, action comics, literature reviews, political essays, humor, fantasy, concept art, poetry; these all kept me learning different things everyday, sometimes the hard way. In the end, it all contributed to the expansion of my interests and the constant discovery of new challenges.

Is there anything you wish to accomplish beyond the visual arts?

Oh, yes. Composing music is my second passion, and I would love to write the score for a movie. I'd also love to write exactly three books: a scary poems anthology, a short sci-fi stories collection, and a fat novel. Most of all, I just hope that my artistic journey never ends; I want to keep paying back on the great amount of creation that I consume everyday.

See more at Patricio Betteo's deviantArt page.