Artist finds inspiration in monster

Frankenstein’s infamous monster inspired Kristopher Layman’s art. The 21-year-old Baker City man scattered 85 of his individually numbered pieces, 65 in Baker City and 20 in La Grande, leaving them, he said, for anybody to find. (Baker City Herald/Russell Vineyard)

An image of terror and bone-chilling fear from the 1930s.

Frankenstein’s monster.

Boris Karloff’s square forehead was scarred and rugged, a bolt through his neck, his eyes like a doll’s — lifeless and horrifying. 

The character, as envisioned by the Universal Studios special effects artists in the 1930s, was cumbersome, pieced together with leftover body parts held together with surgical wire.

Not much of a role model.

However, those dark images are exactly the reason Kristopher Layman thinks of the monster as more than a creature created to frighten.

“He wasn’t made perfect,” he said.

But perfect for Layman’s artistic vision.

Layman, 21, works as store manager for Shifty’s Skate Shop in downtown Baker City.

He is an artist.

An unusual sort of artist.

Layman has left 85 of his paintings for anybody to just pick up — 65 in Baker City, 20 in La Grande.

Many of the pieces feature Frankenstein’s famous monster.

“I love Frankenstein,” he said.

The ones that don’t feature the monster show a silhouette image of Layman as a young child.

“They sort of symbolize being alone in the world,” he said.

Layman said he started painting to express this emotion so people would have more to look at than a painting on a wall.

“I love art,” he said.

 He began distributing his pieces, which are individually numbered, after he injured his foot on his skateboard in June.

 “I had this idea when I was 16, I just hadn’t done it yet,” Layman said.

When people find the paintings, they can keep them.

Although Layman can identify with Frankenstein’s tragic creation, he got his start in a much more typical fashion.

No dungeon laboratory.

No deformed assistant doing the bidding of a mad scientist.

Growing up, Layman’s father painted houses in San Diego. He showed his son how to mix colors.

Layman’s mother, meanwhile, taught him to turn those colors into images.

He received further encouragement in high school.

“My art teacher influenced me to do what I want and not what everyone else wanted,” he said.

But Layman said his biggest inspiration was understanding that he, like Frankenstein’s monster, wasn’t perfect — and Layman created from that imperfection a set of guidelines to live his life.

“Knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand while imagination embraces the world,” Layman wrote. “We are never built perfect in this life.”

The full text of Layman’s rules for life are scribbled on a Frankenstein painting hanging on the wall at Shifty’s.

These rules, had they been written during Mary Shelley’s time, could have been the reason Dr. Frankenstein wanted to create life.

Layman’s connection with Frankenstein, though, has deeper roots than his enjoying the movie and relation of the imperfections.

Layman comes from a broken home. He said he often felt that his parents rarely noticed him, leaving him feeling abandoned and to fend for himself.

In a way, he said, this created a monster.

Layman said he can relate to Shelley’s gothic tale of a monster that frightened people who didn’t understand what it was.

“When I was growing up I was part of the wall,” he said, noting that his parents sometimes abused drugs.

And he said being part of a wall made him feel like a painting people look at, but don’t understand and later disregard.

Layman declines to say where he hid his paintings.

He wants it to be “like an Easter egg hunt.”

“I think it should be available for everyone,” he said.

Although he distributed 85 of his paintings, some of the rest of his 100-piece series are displayed at Shifty’s. One is at Crossroads Carnegie Art Center.

Pictures of his paintings, both distributed and undistributed, can be found on his Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2048819&id=1238116730