2020

At the beginning of this year, I was still trying to find my artistic sea legs. Settled on a love of drawing people, silly characters, and reference photos from Pinterest. Worked digitally often, and felt an excitement for 2020, feeling thrilled with the direction my work was headed it and my upcoming college graduation.

Then, the pandemic happened. Transformation began, (academically, artistically, and emotionally). The art I started making in quarantine shifted drastically, becoming pure ranting about my feelings, the state of the world, etc.. Needless to say, my mental health wasn’t great here. I was burnt out from four heavy years of busting my ass to finish undergrad strong, depressed that my final semester of college stolen by the pandemic, and experiencing really, really intense anxiety watching COVID-19 take over the world. The art I made in 2020, then, was a vehicle; I dumped how I was feeling within it, as honestly, intensely, and aggressively as I possibly could.

I found my voice in this work. Tons of repressed trauma and internal battles flowed forth alongside my pandemic fears. Inwardly, I was experiencing chaos that was causing severe panic attacks, insomnia, and anger. These elements came forth in line, color, and characters. This process was abundantly painful, but incredibly necessary. This year’s worth of art is tough for me to look at. It was the catalyst for everything I do now, though.

For that, I owe the creative sprit that helped me create this work extensive, never-ending gratitude.

Didn’t have access to a large scanner at the time, so these drawings — which were mostly 18” x 24” and larger — had to be scanned with my iPhone. :’)

My emotions bubbled over within these works, spilling over in an anxious, sweeping symphony of my favorite lyrics, thoughts, and paranoia.

I was not well when I made this art. But it provided me with a space to explore my internal life.

Above: one of the first confessional “comics” I created, three weeks into graduate school beginning.

I was a wreck in the summer of 2020. But I kept drawing.

I was lost creatively, too, consumed with exhaustion from my final semester of college and frustrated with my art.

Consumed with heavy emotions of confusion (of what I wanted my future to be), anger (at the state of the world), and hope (that things would eventually get better, internally and externally), I sought comfort in the empty pages of my $9.99 Artist’s Loft sketchbook and got to work, making and experimenting.

And I started venting in those pages.

I moved away from making “pretty”, pastel things to crafting raw, nasty, confessional compositions that spoke directly to my deepest fears & insecurities (a process that can be seen occurring slowly, above, as I prepared to enter my first year of graduate school while in quarantine.

I began drawing repeating symbols in that book obsessively, filling up pages upon pages with them until my fingers were raw and in pain.

I didn’t know it at the time, but these symbols, the way I was drawing them… they were guiding me towards my process: the no-planning, rapid, spontaneous method of producing confessionary, honest free-hand renderings of repetitive, original icons in ink and paint marker on a multitude of surfaces I love today.

Undergrad, Senior Year (January-May ‘20)

Four sketchbook pages from one of the last in-person, undergraduate class sessions I would (unknowingly) ever attend.