#PerfilesMacabros: Alejandro Montes Santamaría, monster illustrator.

A couple of weeks ago, the dark illustrations Alejandro Montes created for the special edition of the story "El señor Ligotti" by Mexican writer Bernardo Esquinca appeared on the Instagram of Aurora, the Guanajuato International Horror Film Festival. Regarding this collaboration, we asked Alejandro, who is also the director and founder of Aurora, to tell us about it and about his addiction to images.

How did the collaboration to illustrate Bernardo Esquinca's book come about?

“I'm a constant reader and the annual pilgrimage to the FIL is a must; an editor friend from Guanajuato asked me if I'd read Bernardo Esquinca, who was one of the Mexican writers writing horror without fear of shouting it publicly, and who was presenting Demonia, if I remember correctly, at that book fair. So I went to the presentation and bought Demonia and Los niños de Paja. I like having my books signed by the authors, so I asked him to sign the books and that was the end of this first part of the story. A few months later I was invited to a barbecue at the home of someone who's now a friend, the writer Juan Manuel Servín, and there I ran into Bernardo again; we talked for a while about things we're both interested in, and from there, through Instagram, we started forging a really cool friendship. I would share some drawings I made inspired by his stories. Later I got to present Bernardo and his Casasola saga at the Universidad de Guanajuato Book Fair, and we talked about the possibility of collaborating on something together someday.”

"It happened a few months ago: Bernardo told me he had a new, unpublished story that would be published by Almadía, his publishing house, which also makes beautiful books. He asked me if I had time to read it, do some illustrations, and propose an image for the cover of the story "El señor Ligotti." Needless to say, I'm a huge fan of Bernardo's writing, and it was a great honor to receive this invitation."

"I made the cover using a linoleum engraving plate, and I made the interior illustrations with India ink, salt, and fountain pens on cotton paper."

“I confess I'm addicted to images,” “I have an obsession with seeing everything and storing it in my head. I studied graphic design and visual arts because in each discipline I found something the other lacked, but I feed on music, literature, comics, video games, and a lot of film, mainly the aesthetics of the fantastic and the dark, the abject and the strange”.

“For as long as I can remember I've drawn, and I always knew I wanted to create things using whatever medium was necessary to capture what I imagined. Drawing is my way of engaging with the world; it's how I socialize with what surrounds me and with those I share my life with.”

“When I started training seriously in drawing and its representation techniques, I had the urge to do it in order to create sculptural objects, but along the way I discovered printmaking and became obsessed with the technical challenges of making an image through this technique. However, one day, by accident, thanks to my Sensei, Miguel Angel Ferro, I discovered that I conceived those two-dimensional images in my head as three-dimensional objects; now I spend my time creating things with ceramic techniques, and I keep producing multiple originals with the printmaking techniques I know and am still learning. I never part with the one system that never fails: pencil and paper.”

“It's rare that I draw something unrelated to what I read, and although I try to read a bit of everything, fantasy literature, science fiction, and horror are the genres I consume the most. And that has a big influence on why the things I make always revolve around these themes. I'm very interested in the creative process that happens right after watching a movie, playing a good video game, or reading a good story."

Alejandro has very diverse influences, such as the Conan comics drawn by Sal Buscema, John Romita's Spider-Man, the inks of Tod McFarlan (especially the subciudad saga), Mike Mignola's panels, and the atmospheres of Jhonen Vasquez. Engravers such as Alberto Durero, Francisco de Goya, Otto Dixx, Käte Kollmitz, and the entire early-20th-century German Expressionist graphic movement; Posada, Manilla, Leopoldo Méndez, and Julio Ruelas.

In painting he mentions H.R. Giger, Zidslaw Beksinki, Gerard Brom, Arturo Rivera, Tamara de Lempicka, the sketches of Leonardo Da vinci, Leonora Carrington, Rafael Cauduro, Jesús Gallardo, "who was my drawing teacher back home on my ranch". In photography: Joel Peter Whitkin, Daniel Weinstock, Emanuel Lubeski, Helmuth Newton, "and I'm sure there's a ton more I'm forgetting to mention, and someday when I read this again I'll say, damn, why didn't I include this one. Santiago Caruso and Miguel Angel Ferro deserve special mention, because besides being my friends, they've had a huge influence on my work”.

Illustrations by Alejandro Montes Santamaría for "El Señor Ligotti" by Bernardo Esquinca. Limited edition for the anniversary of Editorial Almadía.

Interview by Edna Campos Tenorio (@ednactenorio)