Interview with Henriette Valium (Patrick Henley)

q)Tell me something about yourself..What's your background...?

a) Remember Trainspotting, the film? When a guy says that scottish people are the greatest assholes in the world? I don't agree with him, it's us, the french-canadians, and I'm thier great retarded king. My dum incestuous peasants parents came from a shit-hole in gaspesia and it end up for me at 48 in another shit-hole of a 1 1/2 room for $350 fucking big dollars by month in north of Montreal. And 2 years ago we were ten desesperate souls fighting to have it! 4 childs with 3 women that one after the other have let me down my freshly ripped hart in their mouth bleeding of sadness cause I'm too sensitive and I was in love with them and I've stick on my script doing my useless & priceless art instead of crawling on ground at their feets and make the same pathetik fuckin asshole life my father did so holy shit I just can't tell you how much they make you pay for it if you don't want to dirt your hands and stay a free man! Not to mention that I'm on welfare for those clowns or poets reading this and thinking that I'm living out of my crap! Montreal, still a beautiful girl despite all the stabbing in her face I've saw her getting over the years! The last 5 or 10 years here have been litterally an pandemia of goddam fucking condos... & at the top of the cake, when you think of that, in march 2007, the fucking Irak War of that goddam fuckin son-of-a-bitch en-of-race Georges W. Bush the killer rightwing space monkee (who have stolen is election!) was topping 1000 billions of $!!! 1000 billions!!!It make me want to move on mars! Shit can you realise one second how the hell of a shit what money this is !?! And for absolutely nothing! From a country that is even not able to give a pencil or a sheet of paper or a quarter of milk to a black child in a ghetto or to be on time to help people after a tropical storm... There is no democracy, or communism, or capitalism or anything else. everywhere it is mafiocracy. and if you want to change things now well you'll be poisoned by dioxyne... well... in fact I'm irish, french-canadian irish what is the worst of the worst, my real name is Patrick Henley. I'm a french speaking person, if we can call "joual" french. The "joual" is like the creole, a kind of french dialect speak in the beautifull shit-hole of "province de Québec", Canada, also called "canabec" or "quénada" at choice. That's why my english is so bad.

q)When growing what was the greatest force pushing you towards art?

a)Oh man, was it the desire to escape the hell I was in, this reality, the permanent ultimate freak show? Not the money anyway. Was it the desire to confront my father and the fear to end making the same pathetik moron life he have made? I think after all that the first time I've saw one of my drawing on a white page I've seen something that can't lie to me because I've done it, but this came to my mind years later. I draw things I even don't remember since when, and my art have completely doomed my life so after all it must be some stupid or irrational or evil forces or all of that that command me to continue suffering in silence, pain & resignation before I collapse. Art is both the storm and the shelter.

q)Were you inspired/encouraged by any one person to pursue your craft?

a)Not at the beginning! In any case not from my close family. but soon you find some congenitals freaks friends trapped in the same mud bath, and it goes on. We start little comic fanzines so then you meet new friends etc. I do paintings and comics, also now music, but at that time Bellmer and Grosz have inspired me for the painting, Hergé, Jacovitti and Crumb for the comics. Later I found others influences like Willem or Joe Coleman etc. In Bethesda in 2001 one day I met the great Willem. what a man. He came to me and say that for him I was a "real artist". I cry tears of blood since that day!

q)How would you describe your art to someone who could not see it?

a)Ultra vivid hardcore low-brow ultimate hysterical alternative underground punk art, drawings, degenerated comics, apocalyptic industrial landscape music and ultra mad dyspeptic silkscreens works!

q)Are certains colours,shapes that you're drawn to?

a)Beautiful nude babes! pink, round & fleshy lips, hass & tits! 2 or 3, maybe more, one blonde, one brunette, one black or asian or both. Tits not too big, just the good size to fit in a honest man's hand. 1:20 pm, boat at quay, beach stripes with nymphettes silhouettes in the distant sunset playing topless handball on the warm white sand, laffing, drinking, waiting for me! Percy faith greatest hits is playing (not so loud). I look at them, smiling, I'm in my early 20's & on a lasy chair, scotch glass drink and a cigarette in my left hand, a cold beer in my right, and around my nose remains of a line of good hell's angels cocaine I made in the toilet of the mansion half an hour before, looking at her and knowing holy shit that I'm gonna fuck tonight! The next day the same (but with different girls), and next day too ad infinitum ...the paradise...

q)What other talent would you like most to have?

a)Play a music instrument, like guitar or base or violin, anything. I use to be the lead singer of a band but I did'nt like that after all, so I've stop making live performance despite the fact that I really love to be on stage. But if I was knowing how to play guitar for example I'm sure I still be in a band. Now I do computer music (if you can call that music) but it's not the same that when you play live.

q)What's your favourite mediums to work in/on?

a)A big sheet of paper with technical drawing pencils. My comics are made in thicker papers. I do also comic paintings, acrylic on canvas but I prefer ink and aquarelle on paper.

q)What artists influence or have influenced you(these need not be visual artists)and how have they done so?

a)For the paintings, undoubtly it was Hans Bellmer and Georges Grosz (I'm not sure the spelling). Bellmer was a fuckin genious way, way & way ahead of his time making the most disturbing drawings and photos I ever saw in my life and it was in the '20! George Grosz, but only the period when he was in Germany confronting nazis in the mis 30'. After he had move to USA he only made shit (from what I know anyway). But the german period was completly demencial. He had made few painting with the complete premonition of the horrors that will occurs few years later with wwII. Concerning Bellmer, he died in '76, when I was 17. So it means that if at that time I had guts & more smart I can save my money and go see him in Amsterdam, let's say in '75 and shake the hand of the master! But of course it has not happens. For the comics, I first met Hergé (Tintin), and after another forgotten italian genious named Jacovitti, and of course crumb and all the underground comics authors. I met Gilbert Shelton in Paris, really a nice guy. Willem of course, a few times. I've saw a original painting of Robt T. Williams in the kitchen of Pizz in L.A.. Of course after that a lot of influences for here and there, but I can't remember all the names I've copy over the years...

q)What non-visual art interest you and does this have an impact on your art?

a)Music of course but now I can make some. animation, and my dream is one day to have a full 1 1/2 hour Valium story in computer or pixilation movie on the big screen but it is just a dream. I hate dance to death, any kind of. I use to do theater in highs school. Theater is fun but the actors crowd I just can't stand them! Some times I use photography to put in my art as base elements, but as I am an old fashioned punk I find quite hard to consider photography as an art but I know I'm wrong, it must be true. Somehow... I don't read much books but I know that the hardest thing in art from my point of view is the writing, but nothing have really influenced me so far in that field. in a certain sens, I already do cinema & poetry cause I consider comics a form of mix between them.

q)What do you think about artists using the Internet as a forum for sharing their work?

a)I don't really believe in internet. Of course it's better than nothing and can be a great way as an artist to show his works, but in a general term I think internet just make the shit running faster & spreading wider. Internet is perfect if you sell gaz stove parts, or to get any kind of informations. But one of the problems often is to know if the information you get is really true, and I don't have any gaz stove or credit card. For sex it is also not to bad, but when I start having internet I've blast my mind at the beginning going on porn site, and getting virus on my computer etc so... Concerning the artists, internet have induce a complete unbalance between offer and demand, so that's why today an image or a music song doesn't worth nothing. You should have been a painter in the '50 and a musician in the '70, but now. Can you tell me how much the hell worth a mp3 song those days? or an image? Nothing! So on one hand yes, you got a world wide exposure but on the other hand the stuff you made and/or offer doesn't worth anything anymore. I've discuss over that one day and the young man says he's gonna make a web site and offer is pottery works on line. Well, that's really nice but what will happens if I go on Google and search for "hand made pottery"I'll stumble over maybe 20,000 sites as same as the poor guy's one, all offering thier works etc., maybe some times for free! so... www.henriettevalium.com is my effort in that field.

q)What is your favourite toy,game or other artefact from your youth(and do you still own it)?

a)I use to have a chemical set, and I scrap the basement lavabo of my parents house at that time. Lego blocks was is my favourite toys when young.

q)Got any new projects planned?

a)4th may 2007 I'll be in Paris for the exhibit and the launch of L'association comic book, Monte-En-L'Air gallery, 6 rue des Panoyaux, XXème arrondissement, métro Ménilmontant . Lot's of projects are always on road with me, visual and musical, just inquire in my web site, upgrades 2 or 3 times a year.

q)What advice can you give to other artists to help them improve their chances of survival in this global village we call our home?

a)There's no chances of survival so jump the next fuckin' bridge if you're smart or go get a job & a wife, found a family and forget all about that and be happy. If you are a stupid jerk like me just go ahead and paint and do music, but remember, all around you assholes of any kind will make you pay until the end of your day just because you are free and happy! And they just can't stand that! The hardest for someone is to look at his fucking face in the mirror and admit he or she was wrong, and then make changes in his/her own pathetic life. So what they do is to make all the people surrounding them as dumb & unhappy as they are! and I'm not talking about strangers or ennemys, or arab terrorist or black ghetto killers. No. Most of the time the metal blade in your back is pushed by a close friend or your own god damn family! How the hell of a shit a guy can survive when the "global village" turn out to be a complete nightmare, when your own fuckin mother makes everything she can to dirty you and bring you down in the sewer with all the others? don't trust anyone but yourself! Be a complete paranoiac, it might make you survive! Enjoy & praise ultraloud death metal. Don't trust anybody & hate everyone! Hate! Hate!

q)Favourite books/authors?

a)Freak Brothers, all Wilhem stuff, Dennis Worden, Michael Cupperman, all the freak at "Le Dernier Cri" of Marseille like Bolino, Stue Mead, Dr Mischa Good etc, Guim, Blanquet, Rob't T. Willians, Caro Caron, Coleman and all the others I like but don't remember the name. as long it is weird and/or hard and/or unpleasant etc.

q)Favourite music?

a)I use to be a metal freak in the '90, I still listen metal with my drinking friend Guim, but in fact I listen most of everything, from Demmis Roussos to Stockausen and from Mozart to early french music. Anything goes.

q)What do you fear most?

a)To end up my life sick (what probably will happens). Death is nothing, but sickness... When you're sick you're not really alive, not really dead. You’re are just fuckin sick...

q) Your contacts...

a)Go see www.henriettevalium.com, the link page. Next upgrade this summer. also I need an adress in Venice( Italia) cause I'm dying to go see that place next year if this shitty world still running so if someone know one please tell me. Have a nice day. Big kisses.