Sometimes I wonder why, if I am so concerned with people and their actions and feelings and relationships to one another, my work always features animals. Some people are interested in playing with color psychology; for me, emotions are best expressed through experience with an animal for some reason. Elephants always show up in my work when I feel guilty, especially over something I can't help, possibly because my mother inherieted this gorgeous ivory bracelet with Chinese dragons carved into it from some relative, and as a kid, I secretly loved it -- secretly, because I was ashamed that I liked something made from elephant tusk, as if through my admiration I was supporting the ivory market. It's not something I even think about but just kind of happens, for example, today at work I was thinking about how irrational my chronic guilt is and this doodle of an elephant and a rediculous-looking dragon reconciling just kind of showed up:
I don't remember much from when I was young but I do remember watching animals, ants and spiders and worms especially. They fascinated me because they were so different -- I could never possibly know what it was to be an insect (or any other kind of arthropod) -- but I couldn't help from anthropomorphizing them, wondering why they did what they did, why they would trick and kill the weak. When I got a little older and started paying attention to the world outside the rocks in my backyard I found I was asking the same questions. I don't know if seeing the world pretty much the same way that I did when I was four makes me a child, I do know that stuffing my face with ice cream and donuts and making penis jokes all the time makes me immature and that wearing pigtails and plastic duck barrettes isn't going to prevent me from getting carded until I'm thirty, but I don't really care because I feel like the few things I remember from being a kid have taught me a lot and influenced me in a (hopefully) positive way.
One of these was Calvin and Hobbes, probably my first really powerful artistic influence, which I first read when I was six and inspired me to be a cartoonist until I realized that I wasn't funny. It's still probably one of the smartest and most creative things I've ever read.
And while I'm on literary influences, I should probably also mention The Little Prince which I read a couple years later and still do at every chance. If I used a book as a religious text, I guess this would be it; I've said that I could never date a guy who didn't understand The Little Prince because they could never understand the way I think. Plus, as horrible as it sounds out of context, it has given me the opportunity to see people wearing a boa constrictor digesting an elephant instead of wearing a hat, which is just delightful.
One of these was Calvin and Hobbes, probably my first really powerful artistic influence, which I first read when I was six and inspired me to be a cartoonist until I realized that I wasn't funny. It's still probably one of the smartest and most creative things I've ever read.
And while I'm on literary influences, I should probably also mention The Little Prince which I read a couple years later and still do at every chance. If I used a book as a religious text, I guess this would be it; I've said that I could never date a guy who didn't understand The Little Prince because they could never understand the way I think. Plus, as horrible as it sounds out of context, it has given me the opportunity to see people wearing a boa constrictor digesting an elephant instead of wearing a hat, which is just delightful.
