A POST ABOUT ART PRACTICE

finally

Hi People,

Today I’m going to try something new. I’m going to get really personal and, instead of spilling details of my marriage and my children’s health, talk to you about………my art practice. Scandalous!

But first, some housekeeping. I’ll be talking and drawing on an Instagram Live tomorrow (a first) – it’s the cartoonist Jason Chatfield’s show – I know his work well and love it so much, so I’m excited about this. Tune in!

Here’s a link to a lovely Instagram video explaining my advice column, Dear Pepper, which runs in The New Yorker and is from the point of view of a dog. Please watch, read - and write in with your questions large and small! To dearpepperquestions@gmail.com

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You can buy gorgeous letterpress prints n books here – or at Fishs Eddy, which also sells MuGs.

Instagram, I forget what else there is – swordfish? I am not into social media rn tbh

OK that’s it. Here goes:

I think the newsletter format has been tough me for the same reason all longer-form things are, which is the same reason life in general is. Communicating doesn’t come naturally to me. Every single step I take (word I say, word I write, line I draw) is an agonizing decision between equally decent-seeming possibilities. I think it’s a brain thing, that my brain a less-than-average amount attuned to the correct way to be a person, so it tries extra hard, seeing myriad decisions (where do I look while I talk? What do I do with my hands? What do I say?) where someone else might see no decision at all. I don’t like to show work in progress for the same reason I can’t spend more than a couple of hours in another person’s presence: I’m afraid my mask will slip and you’ll see how much difficulty I have connecting point A to point B. Let alone points C D E etc.

As an experiment, right now, I’m going to show you what I’m doing today (Tuesday). The risk is that you won’t understand me and then I’ll feel terrible and lonely. But the reason I’m able to take the risk in the first place is I feel less lonely now than I have in a long time, maybe three decades. Loneliness has been a big part of the art I make – my need for artifice, of painfully constructing something that can be understood. But I made things before I got lonely, and I will keep making things now.

OK here goes. Exhibit A: a picture of my desk.