Editorial Illustration
This portfolio contains examples of my editorial cartoons and illustrations. Since 2015 this work has increasingly become an important part of my daily art practice. Iowa City’s local Little Village Magazine has been featuring my work in a series titled Stress Fractures. I have a passionate interest in politics and staying engaged and informed is an important part of our duty to participate in our democracy. As an artist I try to stay open to many influences and allow myself to be pulled in different directions. Editorial cartooning is a way to use my visual communication skills to synthesize what I am paying attention to and processing. It helps keep the brain sharpened in a world full of anesthetic influences and distractions and is a chance to jump into the fray and push (and punch) back.
I have always been attracted to the drawing style, satire, hyperbole and storytelling of political cartoons and comic strips like Bloom County, The Far Side, Mad Magazine and many others. Going even further back artists like Goya, Daumier, and Thomas Nast are a few examples of influences. On a personal level I love to work in pen and ink and watercolor. I am interested in the “animal” like nature of humans and how they predictably succumb to their base instincts and weaknesses. My goal is to draw out the things that drive us (and our leaders) on an emotional and evolutionary level. It’s important to have a strong visceral relationship with the materials and use the brush marks, lines, dots and textures as notes to play the full song of the characters represented, and to find the humor, horror, and hope contained there.
