For many artists, traumatic incidents influence their creative output. Randy Janson is one such artist, seeing as his inspirations could quite easily have been the death of him. Says Randy, " The level that I'm at now more or less happened because of a relationship with a girl in which I ended up getting stabbed, and then I was unable to get out and find women. So I just started painting them the way I wanted them."
Randy's in-your-face paintings of women depict them in both assertive and passive attitudes… "Yeah, I guess it's just a reflection of what I've encountered in my life with women. A lot of them were always fighting for power. I always had somewhat of a clash with them, but I liked it 'cos they kind of had some kind of spark in them, and they were trying to do something for themselves; whereas the submissive ones… I've had girls like that are damn boring, they're just too willing to do anything you say. But you know, I think a woman with a gun, it's kind of a penis extension, like she has a strap-on power, it's just a symbol of that, I guess."
Being on the end of a babe's blade wasn't the only time Randy's had a near fatal run-in with the Reaper.
The incidents seem to happen in seven-year cycles…
"In '95 I got run over by a car, but when I was 17 I split my skull in half. I was in the hospital waiting for my mom to visit, and the pain was so damn intense.
" I remember sitting there waiting, waiting, and all of a sudden I felt really strange, the pain went away and I was looking down on my body lying there in the hospital bed. It was insane, I had no idea what was going on, and I just started feeling like I was falling but actually floating upwards into like a black hole or something, but I was really calm and the temperature was great, I felt so comfortable. I floated up to this huge white light, and there was kind of a man-like image or something, with a light behind him so he was silhouetted, and I was having a conversation with this person. He kept telling me stuff, and I kept saying, 'I'm waiting for my mom, I gotta go back to see my mom,' and he was like, 'Okay, if that's your deal'.
"And the next thing I know is I'm coming back down into the reverse of the whole thing I'd just been through, and then back into the crazy intense pain.
"Then my Mom walked through the door. It was quite crazy - I didn't talk about it for about two years, 'cos I just thought people would think it was completely insane. But people realized I was completely insane anyways, so it didn't really matter whether I told them or not - they get that impression as it is !"

Unfortunately, true to form, Randy's suffering the curse of his accident cycle, and is unable to paint due to a severe arm injury. So why not give the guy a break (no pun intended), and buy one of his confrontational sex paintings from www.newpopart.com. You know who to say sent you !