Collection: Chet Zar

Chet Zar’s empathetic oil paintings of monsters invite viewers to connect with their “shadow sides.” Often set in a barren background, his portraits of monsters run the gamut from brooding to sad to humorous to contemplative to simply mysterious. What they have in common is their ability to beautifully convey emotion through the unlikely vehicle of monsters.

Zar got his start in the special-effects field, creating three-dimensional creatures by hand for movies such as Hellboy and The Ring, and he’s also known for his work in music videos for the band Tool.

When Zar first started selling his paintings in the early 2000s, there was not a huge market for them, but either he found his audience or the art world caught up with him. He has noted that the popularity that tattoos have attained over the last several years has likely played a role in the emerging popularity of Dark Art: the aesthetic of a lot of tattoo design is similar to that of Dark Art, and as more people have gotten tattoos, more people have been exposed to this type of art in general and have liked it.

Still, Zar works hard to highlight the genre and give its artists and fans a home. His commitment to promoting Dark Art is an outgrowth of the documentary Chet Zar: I Like To Paint Monsters, which was made by Mike Correll. The documentary was intended to focus on Zar and his work, but it organically grew into a larger discussion about Dark Art. This led to Zar and Correll starting the Dark Art Society podcast series, which as of this writing has included 182 episodes. Zar has launched a cooperative devoted to the genre as well.

While some may think of Dark Art as art which depicts horror or violence or is heavily influenced by the tropes of misunderstood Hollywood style occultism, for Zar, it is a broader genre with a far more universal meaning: Dark Art is a genre through which people can explore their fears, anxieties, experiences of loneliness, etc.

Zar, born on November 12, 1967, has been exploring Dark Art since his childhood days in the harbour town of San Pedro, CA. From an early age, he was fascinated with monsters and horror movies: after seeing the original The Dawn of the Dead and The Howling at around age 12, he knew he wanted to make masks and other constructions similar to the effects he saw in those movies.

Zar spent his teens playing music, dirt bike racing, and building his portfolio. At age 16, he got his first paying job in effects, doing makeup at theme park for the Halloween season. After he graduated from high school, he was poised to enter the California Institute of the Arts. But he realised that movie studios were just an hour away from him, and he decided that it made more sense to take his body of work up to that point and see if he could parlay that into a job in the industry.

The fledgling Alterian Studios offered Zar his first real entry into the industry, and he remained there for more than 10 years, when he was offered the opportunity to work in the studio of Rick Baker. This led to the offer to do effects work on the movie Hellboy, directed by Guillermo del Toro. By the time Hellboy II was being made, del Toro trusted Zar enough to give him almost free rein in creating the Chamberlain for that movie. Zar did special effects work for a variety of movies, including Planet of the Apes, The Grinch, The Ring, and Me, Myself & Irene.

Zar’s work in special effects for movies brought him other work as well. While working at Alterian, he met fellow makeup artist Adam Jones, who would go on to be a member of the band Tool. Zar was invited to contribute some last-minute effects to Tool’s video for the song “Stinkfest,” which led to him working on other videos for the band, as well as 3d computer animation for their live shows. Zar’s work for Tool is recognised and remembered by fans of the band to this day.

While Zar was working at the studio and on these outside projects, he was also painting in his spare time and began to sell his paintings. As Zar began to sell work that sprang from his own imagination, he grew increasingly dissatisfied with spending the bulk of his time creating special-effects work that was mostly reflective of the visions of other people. In 2000, he made the decision to start a new fine art career and spent the next 9 years establishing it in tandem with his day job in FX. In 2009, he left the movie industry to create his own art full-time.

Zar is a self-taught painter who has noted that with enough dedication, one can take advantage of the many free resources available on the Internet for learning technique. He was mentored as a child by his step-father, fantasy artist James Zar, and he considers H. R. Giger, Frank Frazetta and Zdzisław Beksinski to be among his top influences.

A detailed retrospective of Zar’s eclectic career, Black Magick: The Art of Chet Zar, was published in 2012 by Beinart Publishing. This book offers reminiscences from Zar as well as contributions from film director Guillermo del Toro, renowned tattooist Paul Booth and former editor of Rue Morgue magazine Jovanka Vuckovic; in addition, it includes more than 150 images of his paintings, sculptures and sketches.  

While serving as a bit of an ambassador of the Dark Art genre, Zar is exploring the depth of his own work as well. For the past few years, he has been at work on the book Dy5topia, which he considers a “field guide to the world [he’s] been painting for the past 15 or 20 years,” inspired by Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials. The book gives background information on the characters of his paintings and what their world is like. Zar has realised that there is a story to these paintings and that he is still painting this world, which is offering a chance to reinterpret old characters and allow this world to grow. Zar sees the potential of this book as a launch point certainly for another book at minimum but even for a comic series or something bigger.

Zar has also served as a curator of exhibits dedicated to Dark Art, which has allowed him to highlight other artists whose work he considers noteworthy.

Chet Zar is active on a lot of fronts as both an artist and a supporter of fellow artists. More information about him can be found on his website.

Chet Zar exchanging books with Alex Grey. 

Chet Zar’s debut Australian solo exhibition,  The Administrators, was held at Beinart Gallery in July 2019. This show introduced a new class of beings in Dy5topia, the alternate dystopian reality that serves as the setting for Zar’s work.

Interview with Chet Zar.

Essay: And The Monsters Inherit The Earth by Carrie Ann Baade.

Please contact us if you would like to buy an original painting by Chet Zar or to be notified when we have new available art for sale.