Welcome to the Guilt Expo
Guilt has long been the driving force behind my life. It’s a fungus of sorts that I have a symbiotic relationship with. Sure, it comes with an over-indulgence in introspection that results in crippling growth, but in return, as long as I feed it with daily doses of shame it never ceases to protect me from complacency.
I have frequently heard guilt being distinguished from shame in that guilt is a feeling resulting from having done something specific wrong whereas shame is a result of feeling one’s whole self is wrong. While I understand the distinction on paper, I’ve never been satisfied with this explanation as I experience the two as irrevocably linked. My head consistently tells me that my whole self is decidedly wrong precisely because of all the accumulated actions I’ve taken. Through this lens, how could it not all be my fault?
While this despotic guilt is a constant presence in my life, the way it manifests itself in regards to drawing is particularly toxic. This past week while on a trip to Washington, D.C., however, I had a rare moment of clarity regarding this specific variety of guilt.
I was in D.C. for the Small Press Expo and had arrived a day and a half early in order to wander the city. As I was waiting to board the Metro after landing at the airport, my eye caught an advertisement for a Ralph Steadman retrospective which had opened at American University a couple days prior. I’ve always loved Steadman’s illustrations, but had never seen any of his originals before. I looked at the exhibition hours and realized if I rushed to drop off my suitcase at my Airbnb, I’d just be able to make it in time to see the show before it closed for the day.
For those of you who are not familiar with Ralph Steadman, I’d warrant that most of you would nonetheless immediately recognize his work, if only from Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Primarily executed in pen and a variety of inks, Steadman’s drawings accost the viewer with a disturbing, yet inexplicably pleasing, balance between masterful draftsmanship and utter mayhem.

Each drawing has such explosive energy that anytime I’ve contemplated it in books I have been baffled as to their creation and left feeling guilty. I realize this is a strange shift from admiration to guilt, but the only way I can explain it is that I feel guilty for not having worked hard enough to develop my own abilities to achieve the same level of controlled chaos in my own work. Thus I don’t even attempt something similar and instead retreat creatively into far safer and less ambitions ways of drawing, trying to hide my guilt from the world and in the process sabotage my attempts before starting.
Immediately upon entering the Steadman exhibition this past week, the clouds of guilt parted just a bit and I was left in a state of awed comprehension. I had not realized just how large his original drawings are. Most of them are 24 x 30 inches, with some even larger still. When seen in person at this appropriate scale everything began to make sense. Of course the drawings would need to be this big in order to achieve both the complexity of the draftsmanship as well as the chaotic ink explosions, which are only possible by using the motion of the entire arm slashing across the page.
So here I’ve been avoiding looking at Steadman’s work too closely over the years in order to avoid feeling guilty, only to see his drawings in person and immediately realize my guilt was based on the fantasy of seeing the work at a highly reduced scale in books.
In a similar manner, years ago when I first saw some of Edward Gorey’s original drawings at an exhibit in Chicago, my comprehension blossomed as I discovered his work is far smaller than I thought–usually drawn at the same scale to be printed. The beautiful slightly wavering awkwardness of his outlines as well as the overly controlled hatching could only have been achieved by using the finest of pen nibs and constraining his hand to such a small surface area.
These moments of clarity certainly don’t banish the artistic guilt I feel, but they certainly provide me with distinct memories that serve as reminders not to compare myself too much to other illustrators. The creative context in which someone’s work is fashioned is highly personal and varied–scale just being one of countless factors–and thus rather than feeling guilty for not having achieved what someone else has, I should instead learn to translate admiration for other’s work into a license to freely explore and adapt what I see into something that feels my own.
Perhaps, this is a more pleasant and effective way to avoid complacency.
I doubt it, but perhaps.
Small Press Expo
This past weekend I was tabling at the Small Press Expo (SPX) just outside of D.C. I always love doing this show and it was made all the more enjoyable by tabling with my dear friend Ben Hatke who is an incredible author, artist, and all around magic person. Our little space was crammed between the wall and an impenetrable line of exhibitors on either side so we had to resort to crawling under the table to get in and out, which ultimately only added to the fun. After the show was over, I spent a couple days with Ben and his family and in the process Ben and I got into a variety of the best kinds of trouble.

Cemetery Saturday
These past several Cemetery Saturdays I’ve done drawings from cemeteries in four different states. The statue of the footless girl, however, was from my visit to Congressional Cemetery, in D.C. last week. I had done a commissioned illustration for this cemetery earlier this year and have been wanting to visit it since.
I was quite taken with the cemetery as it is full of rather old graves, by American standards, within impressive grounds which now act as a community dog park. Additionally, the cemetery is actively creating welcoming events to try and entice people to spend more time in the cemetery. On the day that I visited, they were going to be having a movie night in the chapel showing The Sixth Sense. While I did not attend the screening–I’m ashamed to say I’m still scared from the first time I saw that movie in high school–I am delighted nonetheless to know the cemetery is doing this kind of outreach and I hope to be able to participate in some of their future events the next I am in D.C.

Autumn Equinox Sale
As some of you may have seen on social media, this weekend I have a 21% off autumn equinox sale going on in my Etsy shop. However, for you subscribers to my newsletter, everything is 30% off and I will extend the sale through Tuesday, September 24rd. Just use coupon code MORBIDEQUINOX when you check out. If for some reason you’ve already placed an order this weekend, send me a message and I’ll refund you the difference.
The State of the Desk