Page 7

guts and black stuff

Page 7! I've got a lot of body feelings, and mostly I think they're gonna kill me. But they haven’t yet! If you've been enjoying these, please consider becoming a paid subscriber and get a look into my creative process. As a little teaser, I am going to give you a bit more of a taste this week.

Humble Beginnings

I've known I was going to do a page like this one since I started this comic. The idea of the inside of a body being a landscape to explore and talk about was too potent for me to pass up. I've been a committed hypochondriac since my early 20s, partially due to having my mom die of cancer and partially because I'm prone to anxiety in the first place. My inner workings seemed as good a place as any to focus my fears. This, coupled with a fear of going to the doctor, has made for a pretty fun cocktail of panic over the past 20ish years. I've come a long way since my early anxieties. I have a lot more facility around dealing with this now, but the thoughts are all still available.

Generally speaking, areas of life that fill you with dread, anxiety, sadness, or any strong feeling are fertile soil to make art about. I have often shied away from these subjects, but whenever I dig in, I find a lot of material to process and move through. Sometimes these feelings take years to pick apart artistically, and sometimes you can jump right in; it's different for everyone and different in every case. For me, the subject of the inner body being revealed has popped up in paintings and drawings for years, somewhat intentionally and unintentionally.

I did this painting in art school when I was probably 19 or 20. What I’m revealing here is more about unasked-for thoughts, how images from your childhood can change what they represent over time. The idea of purging thoughts as an act of violence against yourself. You know, heady art school stuff.

Another violent image, sorry again. The idea behind this one is pulling away of the outer layer in search for something true. Sorry, these are a little dark. I swear the next few are somewhat less... I think.

A sketchbook excerpt from around 2010. The inner feelings versus the outer display, also a bunch of random people sitting in cafes.

Another painting circa 2012. This one revealing a tangled knot of insides, and lots of visual metaphors I don't need to get into.

A more recent sketchbook page. I shared the left side in a previous post, but this one has a few humans with open parts.

Last but not least, this is the cover of a recent sketch collection I put together.

The human inside revealed

In many ways, the drawings/paintings of human insides revealed is what I am trying to share with all the things I make. It's a process of digestion and excretion. Taking in an idea or impression of a moment in time, these pass through me and are excreted by my hands into the world, for better or for worse.

In this current landscape of AI becoming a more powerful tool for image making and creations of all kinds, it's important to remind ourselves that so much of what is great about art is the revealing of some truth through the lens of an individual. I am not opposed to the use of AI, but what it makes is different than what is made by a flawed human in their attempt at finding some inner truth. We feel seen when we look at something that reveals a hidden truth about ourselves. Someone else has experienced it, so we are not alone. Machines can't do that...yet.