Out of Mind
While fully escaping oneself is not possible, the desire is rarely far from my conscious. Escape from all my habits I can not stand. Escape from my far too familiar weaknesses and laziness at confronting them. Escape from the many anxieties I’ve carefully cultivated over the decades.
One of the most poignant desires for escape, however, centers around my creative practice. I increasingly see myself constraining myself creatively in an effort to prolong what I feel is an illusion of competency. The awareness of this constraint, however, does not reveal an exit. Instead it brings self-loathing and a tenacious grip on my daily work routine, as though I’m hoping to find more flavour from a piece of gum I’ve been chewing for years.
Over the past several months I have been working on finishing the illustrations for a children’s book that was written by my friend, the ever magical Ben Hatke. Due to a number of factors this book has taken much longer to complete than anticipated, but the final step was for me to digitally colour the illustrations. I will share more about this book and my collaboration with Ben in upcoming newsletters, but as a teaser I have included one of the coloured spreads below.
Using colour in my drawings does not come easily to me and so I typically hide behind the black and white prison bars I’ve crosshatched into existence. As such, reaching this stage of the book where I needed to devote most of my time to colouring, I felt a overwhelming despondency along with an even stronger desire to escape myself and my own inhibitions. It was, therefore, with deep gratitude and relief that a close friend took pity on me and provided a temporary means of escape.
My friend’s family owns an old house situated on a small lake in rural Wisconsin. While various members of his family use the house as a getaway throughout the year, my friend notified me that no one would be using the house for most of the winter and that I was welcome to go up there to work if I wanted to get out of Chicago for awhile. I readily took him up on this offer and spent two separate weeks in January at the house, colouring my illustrations on an iPad.
The solitude was an immediate relief and within 24 hours, my body settled into a much more relaxed pace while my mind shifted into a more contemplative and healthier pattern of thinking. The addition of the cold temperature outside–one of the weeks, the temperature was below 0° Fahrenheit much of the time, causing the house pipes to briefly freeze–made my walks around the lake all the more invigorating and the simple warmth of the house all the more enticing. I found myself relishing simple daily tasks including cooking, which I normally rush through as quickly as possible. All of this provided a calm backdrop making it far easier to concentrate on my work.
Spending so much time in this frigid oasis left me contemplating how I could translate some of these same calming benefits I felt in Wisconsin back to my home and workspace in such a bustling place like Chicago. And while I don’t have any definitive answers, I will be keeping an eye out for any small opportunities of creating a similar sense of escape. Along these lines, I will also be revisiting a number of the principles and ideas of my pal, the author and humorist Robert Wringham, who created the magazine and newsletter New Escapologist which showcases writings and wisdom about escaping the daily grind.
What surprised me most about working up in Wisconsin, though, was how in spite of feeling like I was physically and mentally moving far more slowly through my days, I was in fact getting more work done than I have in a long time. Yes, it was still difficult and frustrating to figure out how to colour my illustrations, but I felt I had more energy to devote to solving these problems. Or rather, the problems themselves felt interesting rather than overwhelming.
I can’t help wondering whether part of this shift in perspective was due to the expansive view of the frozen lake that I saw every time I looked up from my work. Seeing something so vast and calm seemed to put everything into perspective. This book I was agonizing over really didn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. And if something like that lake, which is far grander and more important than anything I will ever accomplish, can exist with such calm, it is hard not to absorb some of that energy and begin to act in a like manner.
Cemetery Saturday
My quest to visit and draw all of the cemeteries within the Chicago city limits is partially on hiatus, largely due to the fact that I decided I wanted to walk to each of the cemeteries. This being said, the unpredictable cold weather and the distance of some of the cemeteries from my home have delayed my visits. This being said, I hope to check off the few remaining cemeteries within a couple months. In the meantime, I have been drawing some additional views from Chicago cemeteries I have already visited. I was particularly taken with a specific tree within Wunders Cemetery. This ragged old tree has gone full circle first in growing up around a tombstone and now beginning die, giving a striking image of death emerging from death.
C2E2
Last weekend I was back at C2E2 in Chicago. Thanks to all of you who came by my table to say hello and to pick up a pencil sharpener. I tabled with my good friend and fellow comicker, Tyrell Cannon, who made the whole weekend far more enjoyable. If you don’t know his work, Tyrell is an incredibly skilled artist and storyteller. His current project with IDW, Operation Iron Coffin comes out in a couple months and is about Dracula being used as a weapon against the Nazis. What’s not to like?
I was also delighted to see my friends Breña and her father Joe Hernandez. They are by far my favourite cosplayers at the convention and show up each day with a different costume. One day it was with Breña as Hannible, being pushed by Joe as a security guard, and another it was with Breña as the mayor from Nightmare Before Christmas–for which she was featured in the Chicago Tribune. They further surprised me, though, when they showed up on Friday and gave me a vintage pencil sharpener that I didn’t yet have in my collection! I think my heart grew at least three sizes.
Pet Portrait Sale
April 30th is National Pet Adoption Day. In honour of such, later this month I will be announcing a 20% off sale on all custom pet portraits. However, as my newsletter subscribers you can get 30% off pet portraits for the entire month of April. Just enter SPLOOT30 at the check-out when ordering a pet portrait in my Etsy shop.
State of the Desk
good work landis
I have had experiences of fully escaping myself. And I wonder if it is because I am not fully escaping myself but, instead, finding myself, which is how I read your stay in Wisconsin. When we enjoy living, nourishing ourselves, caring, we find ourselves.
The thing that consistently helps me to find myself (or escape) is to modify my language, what I say of myself: nothing I do is wrong, I don’t have faults or failures. Those are judgements and not for me to do. If I don’t talk to myself kindly, who will?
Instead, I first make everything belong (because it does), and then consider whether those things are skillful/unskillful and wholesome/unwholesome. Obviously, I try to go towards the first in each pair but the only way to do so is not rejecting or changing, but instead befriending those things in myself. I think one cannot change. Change happens naturally if you create the right environment as you so nicely illustrated.