This is the third post in a series–part 1: Why Abstract Art? And part two: Why Comics?
While I have always had an affinity for comics, as an artist I was primarily focused on abstract painting. I had started out like many artists in realism first (with landscapes and then life drawing, including a little hyper-realism), but found it confining, bound by rules and convention. I appreciate realistic work and I enjoy looking at it, but I wasn’t being fulfilled in the way that I was seeking.
I focused on painting abstracts in both watercolor on paper, and acrylic on paper and canvas. I used my sketchbooks regularly to make abstract thumbnail studies, and I made tons of them. I made them in work meetings, on random scraps of paper, and in my sketchbooks and journals. I felt like each one could be a painting, but when I would create a painting based on one, something just wasn’t right. I believe it was because I work intuitively, and I was losing that spontaneity by planning ahead. Something about it felt inauthentic and contrived, or it just spectacularly failed. Still, I felt compelled to make these ”thumbnail” sketches, often in sequential layout.
One day, I had a bunch of sketchbooks spread out and was flipping through them, looking for common themes and connections, and it dawned on me–I had been making abstract comics in my sketchbooks, and I had been doing it for quite some time…
And thus began a shift in perspective which led to where I am now, doing this weird art-not-art, comics-not-comics, that makes me so happy that I can’t stop. Abstract Comics were not a thing I chose, as much as a thing I discovered I was already doing. I have no idea why! The best I can offer is an attempt to explain the ‘how’ my practice evolved (or devolved). The one constant throughout this process, is the continual learning to trust and go with the flow. Since I have embraced this way of working, I have discovered immense joy, and that is why I keep doing it.
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