My earliest memories of drawing are from when I was 7-years old, sitting with my 2nd-grade classmate Benji, drawing monster trucks, motorcycles, airplanes, and action figures. When I was 9, a teacher noticed that I had drawn all over my arms. Thinking I needed a canvas for my creative outlet, she sent me home with stacks of drawing paper, which I am forever grateful. Throughout my teens, I copied artwork from the piles of comic books that littered my shared bedroom. Unfortunately, most of those comic book sources didn’t quite depict human anatomy in a realistic manner. They also produced an unrealistic expectation of the female form, one that is still lamentably pervasive in comics. To this day, I still cannot draw hands, feet, or breasts! But I’m working on it.
Fast forward to grownup me, who does not have a career in the arts.
I lament that I don’t spend my days adrift in my fantasies: plying paint to canvases, testing out new drawing tools, and attending gallery openings. My bills are paid with an office administration job, aka pushing paper through one bureaucratic system to another. On the bright side, I don’t ever get sick of sitting at an easel or drawing table and plying my craft in one form or another. Over the years, friends and well wishers have insisted that I could monetize my art if I just, you know, hustled. But the truth is, I’m not a hustler. I don’t have the game in me. Art was a de facto form of escape from the external world. My introverted self cannot fathom the energy it takes to confront that world and sell myself into it. I make art as a form of comfort, pleasure, and entertainment, not because I want to make money from it.
Then what am I doing here?
Stack of OK Cats is way for me to collect and share different formats of my work from the last few years. As I continue to assemble this portfolio, I also gain a critical perspective of how my style, process, and subject matter have evolved and continue to develop. This perspective also shapes the direction that I want to move towards.
Circling back to comics, I see how the repetition of characters, locations, and objects necessitates the simplicity of forms. Just as the old saying goes, “Brevity is the key to wit”, simplicity is the key to design. Especially for comics or cartooning. These days I’m exploring ways of reducing people, objects, and ideas into essential forms; much in the same way logograms or symbols are created. I’m also interested in creating movement in static mediums through “ghosting” of images or repetition of lines.
Stack of OK Cats also serves as the repository of all my works going forward. It gives me a reason to draw, paint, and design. It gives me something to look forward to during the day when I’m pushing paper for someone else. This site is for me to explore my skills and whimsy.
Connect.
stackofokcats 