Creepy #59 Cover ‘Dax the Damned’ 1974

Ken Kelly, born in 1946, painted this cover for Creepy #59, with a kind of raw energy that just leaps out at you. It’s the kind of painting where you can almost smell the oil paint and hear the heavy metal guitar riffs, the colours are saturated. It is kind of maximalist. Look at the way Kelly uses the impasto technique, laying thick globs of paint to give texture to the figures. There's a real sense of physicality, the way he sculpts the muscles of Dax, our hero, with such palpable brushstrokes. The mark-making here is so intuitive. I’m drawn to the shield with a face – the face of the devil himself. It suggests a kind of process, a conversation between the artist and the canvas. Kelly reminds me of Frank Frazetta, in his use of colour, and the way that fantasy illustration meets fine art. The painting embraces ambiguity, each brushstroke a testament to art's ongoing conversation.