Artist Spotlight:

Stephen William Beaubouef

"Who Is Master"

"The Dance of Lights"

"Before the Feast" "Masthead"

"I Don't Do Mornings"

Name: Stephen William Beaubouef

DOB: 1-1-68

Education: Bolton Sr. High

Louisiana College

Louisiana State at Alexandria

Rapides Vo. Tech

At Bolton, took 4 years of art under a teacher who believed that the human figure should always be covered. she was not exactly a fan of Michelangelo's subject matter, though his painting seemed to impress her more than his sculpture. I spent all four years arguing that if I wanted clothes on my subjects I would have put them there. Basically, I spent TOO much time working on the correct anatomy as well as light and shadow play to cover it up. She wanted me drawing bowls of fruit and flowers. My fruit had very shiny surfaces which reflected horrific images, and the flowers which I drew were always of the most poisonous variety, often with droplets of blood on anything with thorns. The most fun, however was biology class. There I would draw dissections of the human anatomy with Looks of terror and pain on the faces of the cadavers". All of this was an attempt of enjoying myself in an otherwise extremely oppressive atmosphere.

Louisiana college was a Baptist college of the strictest sense. No dancing, and no young men and young women were to be seen on campus holding hands. I piped up and said that this was the explanation for the rather low heterosexual population of the campus. They did not appreciate that too much. It was at this school that my fascination with the macabre and gothic really grew. The art teacher spent roughly half the year making the class do nothing but gesture drawings. Gesture drawings are nothing more than glorified scribbles that most artists use as a snapshot to sit down with and work on finished pieces. It got to the point that I would walk into the class and ask 'gesture drawing again?", and when the teacher said! "Yes", I would leave. Eventually, I found it more fun to sit in class doing my "evil" work. More than one of the students thought that I needed an exorcism. Fortunately, for sanity's sake, I only spent one year at LC.

L.S.U.A., was a matter of attempting to hone my skills as an illustrator. The professor there was one of those types who set his class in a room and said "create'. No perimeters, no instruction no nothing. So long as he pieces had contrast, balance, and composition that was all he was worried about. Unfortunately, he did not like my subject matter, either. He told me that artists like Frazetta, Vallejo, and Rowena were all childish. I told him to look up how much those artists were worth and to lead me to the playpen.

Neither the L.C. nor the L.S.U.A. professors were much into my style which one of the more imaginative students called "Photorealisticneoclassicism. I really liked that word. My goal was and often still is to create an image so real as to make the onlooker believe it to move. I wanted realism at its most convincing. The LC professor told me that any camera could do that. My response was "show me a camera that can pick up a pencil or paintbrush"

Favorite books and movies are horror. I really enjoyed Dracula, but it is much more of a love story than a horror flick. It is really difficult for any movie or book to scare me anymore though I am still desperately searching for one which can.

As a child, (third grade, to be exact when other kids were going to the school library checking out books on little lost puppies, or cars, I had my nose buried in a book on the history of Vampires. I would sit and tell the teacher that not only did vampires withstand daylight, but some turned into birds, and oriental ones turned into cats with two tails or no tails and there were even those who did not feed on blood. I was fascinated, and the teacher thought I needed therapy.

At the moment, I work mostly at night. I have two cats, Nickodaemous, and Yowler. Yowler is a feral cat who is trying to become domestic, and Nikki is domestic trying to convince everyone that she's feral.

When I tell people that my work is "Gothic", they ask me what that is, and my explanation is: "Gothic is the ruins of an old, abandoned church. Moonlight streams through the defiant remnants of its stained glass to paint wild nightshade in hues of silver and blood.'

All artwork copyright Stephen William Beaubouef 1998

Vampire Junction can be reached at:

vampires@afn.org