David Willardson

Artists

David Willardson is the creative force of the “Pep Art Movement”, an innovative new genre where cultural icons are rendered with an unprecedented infusion of color, personality and energy. Unlike traditional “pop art”, however, the subjects of Willardson’s “pep” imagery are not soup cans or boxes of Tide – they are classic Disney characters. “They were my childhood heroes,” Willardson remembers. “I never lost that.” The images in his work express an untapped inner verve bubbling within, giving us a sacred glimpse into their Technicolor souls. “And they do have souls,” Willardson says of his subjects.

“I certainly am a product of the pop art movement,” Willardson professes, “But I also have a great love for action painting, which originated in the 1950s with Jackson Pollack and a number of other artists. Action painting is about movement, action and boldness in the painting. I have amalgamated pop art – which deals with pop culture imagery – and action painting, which is really energy painting.” The result is a new genre that packs an energizing visual wallop.

Lurking behind his beloved Disney characters, Willardson discovered a team of animation geniuses that had left an indelible mark on American culture. He sought about learning their craft in order to figure out what made his heroes tick. “As a young kid, I started studying the early Disney imagery – how an eye looked, how a hand looked – in essence, I studied them in minutiae,” Willardson remembers. After graduating from Los Angeles Art Center, Willardson burst onto the entertainment art scene. His passion for the craft and his natural creativity opened doors, which allowed him to produce internationally known images such as the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" movie logo and the classic "American Graffiti" car hop.

However, it was still the world of Disney characters that held the muse for him. “For years, I’d been studying the work of early animation masters like Ubi Iwerks,” Willardson says. “The early animators were world-class draftsman. They could all draw so beautifully. The shapes and forms they used – bold geometric circles and triangles - helped create a character in its purest form. The characters from that period were absolutely perfect. I figured out what made them work – and what didn’t.”

In the 1970s, Willardson was asked by an ad agency to do a painting of Goofy for Walt Disney World. “I rendered it photorealistically,” he says, ”just like a living being, with dimension, shading, core values and rim lighting.” The ad ran nationally and Jeffrey Katzenburg (head of animation at Disney) spotted it. He then called Willardson and asked if he was interested in taking that same approach for a whole new look for Disney. The first thing Willardson created for Katzenburg and Disney was a new movie poster for “Bambi”. His fully rendered images of the Disney classic are still the most widely used to date. Thus began a seventeen-year career at Disney for Willardson.

Willardson also created poster art for “Cinderella,” “Snow White,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” and “The Lion King,” earning him a permanent place in animation art history. With joy, sadness, frustration, and exhilaration – Willardson’s characters exude the pure personality and soul first granted them by the old masters. “They are living legends to me,” Willardson says, “just like Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and James Dean.”