My take on Venom Palette!

Getting to know Venom Palette, or Daniel Johansson as his name is among us mere mortals, is very much like a rendezvous with one of those really fast and rapid-thinking cartoons. Originating from a community of hillbillys he escaped his destiny as a furniture-maker on the assembly line with an overload of artistic ideas that hits you in the face over and over. Always with success as a result.

Although he grew up in the most picturesque of Swedish landscapes, the prose and imagery of Swedish classics didn’t get to him. Instead he walked the other way, finding that punk rock and the cheesy skate-movie Thrashin’ were more of his gusto. A certain love for a specific type of skateboards appeared as well: “My first board was a neon-pink Powell Peralta Skateboard with a grinning skull. It just blew me away”, he says over a cranberry-juice on one of Gothenburg´s terraces.

“My input has always been diversified; take the dancing as an example. It gave me a lot of new perspectives, and I found a never-ending source of great music”. Daniel has 12 years of dancing Boogie Woogie, four of which he was professionally ranked number five in the world.

Never leaving anything half-done, he is clear about breaking boundaries and usurp the future. “I try not to get stuck in the mud…” Looking back at his career so far, lining up projects like a glockenspiel in the fields of Öland and exhibition in London, to the steady day job at a designing agency, to the continuing releases of music and projects with various artists, Daniel is all but a “one thing led to another”-guy. Try “one thing made leads to another thing to make” as a mantra instead.

Not entirely different from one of those animated little rascals I saw as a kid…

Interview by Victor Jorméus, Gothenburg May 2008

Venom Palette

is the moniker of the freelancing graphic artist Daniel Johansson, working in the fields of art direction, illustration, graphic design, conceptual art, installation etc. Established 2005, Sweden.