Illustrator Josh Cook draws from personal experience creating fantastical creatures situated in the reality of today. His work breaks down human behaviour, anxieties and rejections in the way we interact with others and the world. Sometimes political, Josh’s work can be called satire that blends dark humour with eerie characters giving you the choice of whether you want to laugh or cry. Josh’s illustrations are usually found in his self-published zines like Disaster Zine, collaboration with his friend Tori West. Disaster Zine perfectly encapsulates Josh’s subject matter and inspiration highlighting disaster dates with his provocative illustrations accompanied by funny quotes. In this tumultuous time of Covid-19, Josh’s cartoons can be the cathartic release you may need.

How did you fall into illustrating? Do you remember the first time you consciously realised you were going to be an artist?

Since I can remember as a child I was always drawing, painting and imagining different characters in my head. It wasn’t until I was in school that I really thought about doing something with my creativity. I always struggled with other subjects and just really wanted focused on art. It wasn’t until I got to college I decided it felt like the right path for me.

The characters displayed in your work are quite dark, awkward and normally cross between fantasy and reality, where do these ideas come from? Do you draw influence from your day-to-day life and experiences?

Yes I try to portray them in a dark but playful way through the use of colour and satire; I enjoy the contrast of dark humor. I find a lot of people find my work quite intense and they don’t really know how it makes them feel. I quite like the awkwardness that comes from it.
I get a lot of my inspiration from how I feel in day-to-day life and expressing a worldview of some sort. I’m really interested in themes of the human condition and reflecting that in my work. I collect and absorb as many ideas from my experiences and feelings as I can; I guess that’s where the blend of fantasy and reality comes into my work. I try to make my work as satirical as possible because if you don’t laugh, you cry.

You’ve created a zine in collaboration with founder and Editor-in-Chief of Bricks Magazine, Tori West called ‘Disaster Zine’. The zine portrays horror hookup stories with colourful comical imagery, illustrated by you; how did the idea come about?

It came about a few years ago now when we were both living in Bristol and met through a mutual friend at Uni. I was already making zines for my own work and she came to me with the idea of creating a zine about dating.
We were both on the same wavelength of how we wanted the zine to look and feel, as my work is quite dark and humorous anyway so our ideas just flowed really well. When she would write the stories I would just naturally create the colours and images in my head.

Speaking on hookup stories and with online dating being so prominent, how do you feel about dating culture right now and the way it has impacted human interactions, romantic or not?

I feel it definitely has its pros and cons… Especially from a LGBTQ+ perspective as there are many different platforms in where you can connect and meet with different people that share similar interests as you, whereas you wouldn’t necessarily meet these people in day-to-day life and feel safe in doing so. That being said, it does seem quite superficial at times, creating this idea of there being a lot of options, with people holding out romantically, waiting for something better to come along.

What are you currently working on?
I have been working on a lot of personal projects now that the U.K is in lockdown. I have just finished the 2nd installment of an artist book/zine that I’ve been working on, titled ‘HELL 2’. It’s a collection of my work that depicts a personal hell. It’s all self printed and bound. At the moment I’m making limited copies of 6 but that’s still a work in progress.