Hi, I'm Mister Reusch, an award-winning spooky illustrator with teeth made of candycorn. I got my first taste of the supernatural while still in my crib in Haverhill, Massachusetts: "The Bonehead Ghost" came out of my closet, stared at me for a while, then dissolved into a mist that got sucked into a hole in the baseboard. Seriously. My room was drafty and the closet door never fit in the frame right, so on windy nights the closet door would BOOM open and I'd be out of bed and downstairs in .3 seconds screaming that the Bonehead Ghost had come back for me. My dad, who was Rob Zombie's junior high teacher, introduced me at a very young age to the creepy novels of Haverhill horror author John Bellairs and the art of Edward Gorey. A weekly diet of "Creature Double Feature" horror films on Channel 56 and a fateful trip to Zayre's in 5th grade to buy Stephen King's Skeleton Crew and Ozzy's "Bark at the Moon" cassette tape sealed the deal: I've been drawing, painting, and living in a dark, windy, Halloween world ever since. The Boston Globe and TV show "Chronicle" have both explored my ghastly artwork and eye-popping collections of Halloween and horror memorabilia. More of my creepy imagery has been featured in the books, Art of Modern Rock, SWAG 2: Rock Posters of the 90s and Beyond, BLOWER: snowboardinginsideout, and the upcoming Fistful of Rock & Roll.
In 2003, my Boston burlesque star/masked female wrestler/former mortician girlfriend Devilicia and I formed Black Cat Burlesque, a horror and b-movie-themed troupe dedicated to resurrecting spookshows and bringing my creepy paintings to life. Aside from creating acts and performing in monster suits, I design the homemade masks and costumes, posters, and souvenir glow-in-the-dark t-shirts. Along with femme fatale choreographer Mary Widow, her fiendish familiar, real-life undertaker J. Cannibal, and newly revived recruit Das Numi, we've brought our fake-blood-drenched team of stripping mummies, mad doctors, tassel-twirling vampires, tango-dancing werewolves, and wrestling zombie women to the stages of New England, New York City, and Las Vegas--------and were banned by the Puritanical town elders in historic Salem from performing in a Halloween festival that the head witches had invited us to 9 months in advance!
Many of my spooky designs have been licensed to Salem’s custom jewelry company Arcane Nonesuch, and printed as greeting cards, postcards, and invitation sets with Ghastly Greetings. Working from my home studio, I’ve made eerie illustrations for Burton Snowboards, 5150 Snowboards, Bauer-Nike, The Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix, the Weekly Dig, the Coolidge Corner Theatre, J. Cannibal, Dottie Lux, the World Famous Pontani Sisters, the Coney Island Sideshow, Scissorfight, Beat Circus, the Humanoids, the Damned, Little Devil Brand Co., Something Weird Video, Fright Catalog, Satanic Mechanix, and many more. Devilicia and I live with our two Boston Terriers, Frankenstein and Mr. Giles, in an apartment that came with its very own embalming machine in the cellar. It turns out our landlord is in the funeral industry.
I accept creepy commissions all the time, including portraits. My full color acrylic paintings on 11" x 14" 2-ply Bristol cost $350. Black and white acrylic paintings on 11" x 14" 2-ply Bristol are $250. Larger full-color commissions can be painted on either 2-ply Bristol, or canvas stretched over a wooden frame:
Bristol price: Canvas price:
16" x 20" is $500 $525
24" x 36" is $600 $650
36" x 48" is $800 $900
These prices are for private commissions to be hung in the home only; art to be used commercially requires higher fees based on what usage rights you're interested in purchasing. For portraits, please email both close-up headshots and full-body photos to misterreusch@misterreusch.com, as well as any ideas you have of what you want to see. A deposit of 1/2 the agreed-upon fee in advance gets you 3 sketches, and a final sketch based on your feedback. When the painting is completed, I email you a jpeg of the final art and ship the painting to you once the balance is paid, plus shipping with insurance.
Join the growing ranks of Salem Witches, funeral directors, and Goth kids who've got an original Reusch hanging in their crypts!