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Jeremy Hight: Who are some of your main influences?
Deborah Valentine: Ernst Fuchs, Hans Belmer, H R Geiger, Naoto Hatori, Bernard Dumaine, Sal Hunter, Otto Rapp, Alex Grey, Kris Kuksi, Lauri Lipton, De Es, Dali....
JH: Your work has a fascinating sense of surrealism to it. What aspects of surrealism are you most drawn to?
DV: The surrealism I create and emulate are the strangest ideas. impossible ideas. I am most drawn toward the unexpected and erotic.
JH: You do a lot of collaborative drawings. What aspects of collaboration are the most challenging? The most rewarding?
DV: The collaborations I have made are rewarding as many people have grown as an artist because of my club TheExquisiteCorpse. I always see things in the collaborations that the other person does not see until the other side is revealed, sometimes very much the same image. The most challenging to make collaborations is my own fear that their side will be better.
JH: You work in several mediums. Are there aspects of tattoo art and pure abstraction that influence and inspire your drawings?
DV: I have stopped being interested in tattooing, after 25 years it is so much duplication, names on people, it is terribly boring for me now.
JH: Are the distinctions between different fields of art inspiring people to work in different areas or are they being erased more and more now?
DV: I think that as people come into their true power as an artist you can never stop after this. It will just make you better as an artist. It is also best to avoid to try to make something just like the other guy. I like the new artists, however in the last 10 years I see so many people doing the same thing. It might be a challenge for them to really make something unique.
Deborah Valentine became interested in art at a very young age and studied at the California College of Art. She is well known on the Internet for her managing the TheExquisiteCorpse club on DeviantART.
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