A creature becomes something more when an artist gives it a personality, a history and a world beyond what we can see.

That kind of storytelling is at the center of Creature Feature, on view at Access Gallery October 2–24. The exhibition brings together paintings, drawings, digital work and mixed media by Access Gallery artists creating characters and creatures that are playful, eerie, funny and sometimes sinister.

For many of the artists, the image is only the beginning.

Drawing Beyond What Exists

For Access Gallery artist Autistic Tomato, storytelling has become an increasingly important part of his work.

“I like drawing creatures and sci-fi stuff. I think about who they are and what their story is.”

Inspired by science fiction, fantasy and storytelling, Autistic Tomato creates original characters and imaginative worlds filled with unusual beings.

He isn’t especially interested in realism. Instead, he experiments with anatomy, shape and transformation, creating creatures that could only exist in the worlds he imagines.

Working primarily in graphite pencil and markers, he also uses Photoshop to add digital color and combine traditional drawing with digital techniques.

A Summer of Creative Careers

This summer, Autistic Tomato was one of five paid interns in Access Gallery’s Creative Careers program.

Through weekly visits to the Denver Art Museum, conversations about art and opportunities to experiment, the interns explored what it means to work as an artist while developing their own ideas.

For Autistic Tomato, that meant pushing his interest in creatures and storytelling further.

His work became part of Exploration, the exhibition created by the Creative Careers interns. One interactive piece invited visitors to change a character using interchangeable magnetic elements, making the audience part of the creative process.

That willingness to experiment continues in Creature Feature.

The Story Doesn’t Stop at the Page

Autistic Tomato’s ideas increasingly move beyond a single drawing.

A creature can change. A character can have a past. One drawing can lead to another until an entire world begins to take shape.

He’s also interested in bringing those characters off the page. Sculpture is an area he hopes to explore next, including cardboard construction and other ways of turning his drawings into three-dimensional forms.

That sense of possibility runs throughout Creature Feature.

The exhibition isn’t simply about monsters or unusual characters. It’s about imagination and the stories artists build around what they create.

Sometimes a creature starts with a pencil line.

Where it goes from there is entirely up to the artist.