Stephanie McMillan, 2024
Visions of and activity for social transformation have been central to my life since I was in high school in the early 1980s. For much of the time since, most of my art (which I’ve created in various forms, mainly comics and illustrations), has been a direct accompaniment to activism and organizing activities.
For me, the power and purpose of making and sharing art has always been multifaceted, multidirectional, and most importantly: transformative. Not simply passive objects to visually consume, art acts through emotion to affect our deepest narratives. It can soften hearts, strengthen resolve, expand minds, uncover contradictions, expose underlying social structures, spread ideas, challenge injustice, and focus conversation. I’ve also learned in recent years that for both viewer and practitioner it can be healing, and opens connection with each other and with the collective life force or universal spirit.
I bring three main intentions into my current practice:
1) to get to know this place where I live, their* history, plus the names and ways of many species who inhabit them, from an attitude of respect;
2) to overcome the deeply conditioned core exploitation-based worldview comprised of binary, objectifying, monotheist, reductionist, modern-materialist, utilitarian ideologies; and rekindle awareness of and reverence for the living, interconnected, conscious world, the universe-as-super-organism possessing agency(ies);
3) to share encouragement among others living within class-divided, settler, hierarchical and dominator cultures, for us to help one another to reveal and dismantle the underlying structures and superstructures of these social formations and overcome the practices they generate, and to collectively transform our lifeways toward being in harmony with a thriving Earth.
I continue to build two broad bodies of work that express these intentions. Together they roughly correspond to the overarching theme “Love the Living; Fight the Machine.” The two phrases dialectically intertwine, and generally encompass my worldview, my stance of what I’m for and what I’m against.
Yet I present the artworks corresponding to these two phrases separately, as two distinct groups. Each has its own website and Instagram account. This is my way of handling the contradiction common to many artists of making a living selling art while remaining true to one’s creative vision.
Because it’s joyful and hopeful, the “Love the Living”-themed work appeals to a much broader audience. While this work is true to the positive aspect of my worldview, it doesn’t cover what our society considers “negative” (social critique, anger and grief), and thus doesn’t express a complete picture. I believe in constructive optimism, but if I were to focus on it exclusively, it would become a false and toxic positivity.
The “Fight the Machine”-themed work is explicitly political and more emotionally difficult. It’s appreciated by a smaller circle more generally aligned with the outlook that my work as a whole expresses. So I offer both collections to this smaller group. Of course anyone can find my political work if they search, but the separation allows for a comfortable distance to be maintained, when preferred or appropriate.
The “Love” work is created through encounters with and respect for local plants and wildlife, and from a desire to imagine ways of improving relationships within the web of life as a whole. There are three main levels at which I address this: learning the names, general behaviors and physical characteristics of plant and wildlife species where I live; affective portraits that invite personal interaction toward improved relationship with wild beings; and group arrangements pointing to the interconnectedness of all lifeforms (including the living cosmos).
The “Fight” work is comprised of broadly political and/or spiritual direct responses to systemic atrocities, especially class struggle/exploitation and extractive economies/ecocide. This body of work also generates its own internal dialectic — grief and anger turning into productive responses of solidarity, resistance, and collective social transformation.
Stylistic elements across all my work have evolved from my 25+ years as a comics artist influenced by the expressive faces, humor, and “alive” lines of cartoonists such as Charles Schulz, Matt Groening and Lynda Barry; plus the sharply sarcastic social comentary of expressionist George Grosz; and in particular, the neo-expressionist, graffiti-influenced political messaging of artists in 1980s New York (where I lived for 4 years) such as Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sue Coe, and Seth Tobocman. I absorbed from them certain illustrative approaches including abstracted universalized figures, contrasting areas of saturated color both flat and textured or patterned, simplicity of shape, attention to sillhouette, narratives concerning interactions and place, the frequent use of text, and directness of meaning. Like sugar-coated medicine, these elements combine to give my art a lighthearted and accessible visual style that contrasts with seriousness of intent.
I work in a range of materials, including digital, acrylic on canvas, and mixed media (ink/gouache/watercolors/colored pencil) on paper. I’m currently in the process of incorporating less ecologically destructive methods by pulling more materials from the collective waste stream: leftover and rejected samples of latex house paint, cardboard from shipping boxes, and rag paper made of waste fibers from the textile industry for prints.
* I use non-objectifying pronouns intentionally; land is not an “it”.