You might have found your way here because you know me as a visual artist or illustrator, but the truth for me is that words came first. I was a journal keeper and wanted to be a writer before I thought I could paint or illustrate. Writing continues to be a part of my practice: I find the visual work usually happens after so much list-making, note-taking, and mind-mapping. The written word has always felt like the most natural starting place to me.
I like to pay attention to language when I’m out in the world. In urban spaces, my eye is drawn to the the text on road signs, shopfronts, posters and billboards. I’ve always been interested in wordplay and the humour that sometimes happens when unusual words and images are placed together. In my show Up Around the Bend last year, I centred the billboards that I’ve seen along the highways and towns in northwest BC. While making this work I was asking myself: what do signs and language tell us about a place and its culture or politics?
We read the environment differently when we impose our own language in front of it. What do the signs and symbols below tell us about the people who live at the foot this mountain?
I always gravitate to artists that combine images and text: from graphic novels to paintings with writing, these works give me an envious feeling of “I want to make THAT.” I love the wry humour in David Shrigley’s text-infused paintings:
Maira Kalman’s practice is about “drawing words and writing images.” She uses her loopy handwriting to turn her gouache paintings into illustrated narratives, usually inspired by her everyday life and her walks among the people and sights of New York City. In the image below, the handwriting becomes a part of the painting’s composition, bringing our eye through all the little details in the food. But the text also turns this simple image of food into a deeper story about family history. We want to know more about the person who made these things:
The combination of pictures and words generates something larger than the sum of the parts. A “third thing,” a kind of poetry, emerges in their interaction. Photographer and writer Teju Cole’s book Blind Spot consists of 150 pairings of photographs (usually of mundane urban scenes) and text that seem to have no obvious connections. Together, they create a meditation on seeing and blindness (literal, political, racial). Cole’s text does not explain the adjacent image; often it disrupts our understanding of what we can see. Sometimes we are reminded of all that has not been said.
Lately I have been exploring the work of Nora Krug, someone who expands my understanding of all that illustration can do and be. I’m reading her illustrated version of historian Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny, which is a heavy text about recognizing and resisting authoritarianism, and might make me tired and depressed if I were to read it all in plain book form. But Krug’s scrapbook-style collection of coloured pencil drawings, photographs and loopy handwriting give the words an immediacy as they weave around the images. Illustration can allow us to better absorb complex ideas in a text (see also: my previous post on drawing the books you read), and the ideas in On Tyranny have never been more important to understand.
I recommend this fascinating podcast interview with Nora Krug, and here’s a video interview showing parts of her colllage-like illustration process:
Whether we call this sort of work a graphic novel (future post on those perhaps!), visual nonfiction, or “illustration as visual essay,” the combination of text and image opens up new methods of storytelling. Krug’s books remind me that ultimately, illustration is simply one form of communication - like written language, or any form of art - to express ideas. There are no rules; an artist can choose whichever medium allows them to communicate their core idea. In her book Syllabus, comic artist and teacher Lynda Barry calls this core idea The Image, which is not the thing that we literally see in a work of art: it is “something more like a ghost than a picture; something which feels somehow alive, has no fixed meaning and is contained and transported by something that is not alive - a book, a song, a painting, anything we call an ‘art form’.” Whatever art we practice, it is just the vehicle for this deeper Image that we are trying to access.
These thinkers inspire me to make more artwork with text, and more importantly they remind me not to put too many categories and constraints on art. Looking at their work, I can better accept that my practice involves painting, drawing, researching, writing, and collecting. These things all relate and speak to one another.
Spring Things:
Spring is for the alt-country/folk queens: Waxahatchee, Adrienne Lenker, and Kacey Musgraves all released great new albums last month. Kacey Musgraves’ music is the sound of spring to me and I have been loving the earthy simplicity of her new album. Her song Cardinal is about a spiritual connection to the late great John Prine, and I really feel his influence on the direct storytelling in Kacey’s music.
Lately I’ve started my studio time by reading one short segment of Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act. The experience is somewhat akin to listening to your stoned friend waxing poetic about art and the universe late into the night, though that hasn’t made it any less enjoyable!
My playlist of songs for spring.
I watched and loved Poor Things, and this dance sequence will live in my mind forever:
I thought the costume design in Poor Things was so fun. Bella’s clothes, a mix of outrageous puff sleeves and weird, out-of-context Victorian undergarments, reflect the questions the film asks about who we might be if we didn’t experience shame or societal propriety around our bodies.
I finally watched and was blown away by Past Lives. Another wonderful example of images and text singing together - the beautiful script is complimented by the moody cinematography. Shooting on 35mm film gives the movie the same grainy, emotional feel of memories. So many rich blue tones contrasted with the bright lights of carousels, restaurants and bars.
I mainly tend to agree with T.S. Eliot that April is the cruellest month, but there are small pleasures in the season that keep me going, and I made some art to remind me of them:
Thanks for being here. If there’s anything you’d like to hear about in a future newsletter, please send me a reply. And if you’re new, you can visit my website to learn more about me and my work.
Happy spring to all,
Emily
So funny, I just watched Past Lives and Poor Things this weekend. If I 100% agree with you on the latter (I see it as a more nostalgic version of La LA Land, with similar themes of ambition and love and how one can tear you apart from the other), I've been left unimpressed by anything not Emma Stone performing the role of Bella Baxter. It felt like pretty fluff here for cinematic embellishment's sake. I see how every pictural element can bring something to the topic of nature vs polite society, but it felt almost counterproductive to me. Put Stone in front of a white screen and you've got her force shining just as bright, but in this decor and costume she felt like a doll the director was playing with. Anyway, might be off kilter here. So lovely to read you on substack! Always love to read your thoughts!