Johnny Depp

Pencil. 2007. Gift for mumsie. I’ve drawn a few of Johnny Depp as gifts or commissions. He’s played a lot of interesting characters, hasn’t he. I think one of my favourites is Edward Scissorhands. It’s a gothic fairytale about an ‘artificial’ man, clad in black leather, with scissors for hands. It contains themes of identity, self discovery, truth, Beauty and the Beast, along with much social commentary and elements of cyborg theory. Of course, the true beastliness is the ‘conventional’ neurosis outside Edward’s beautiful gothic world. Edward is symbolic of sincerity amid a false, clichéd world that in truth is more harmful than the bladed hands which prevent him from some aspects of human interaction, but which he uses only to create works of art. I’ve always found it resonant.