As a teenager during the Reagan era, I awoke to the terrifying threat of nuclear war, and wrote my first opinion piece with my first political illustration for my high school paper. At that moment I decided to get involved in the anti-war movement, which soon led me to question the entire system that generates horrors like war and global inequality. That was also the moment I discovered the power of art to share ideas, especially when combined with text.
Since then, art and politics have been intertwined for me. Over the years I’ve been involved in various group efforts to resist oppression, exploitation, imperialism, ecocide, and other threats to humanity and the survival of life on our beautiful planet. I make art to connect with others who also hope and/or believe that together we can end capitalism and transform toward classless lifeways that facilitate a thriving Earth.
Across my lifetime, I’ve chosen a variety of media and platforms. I’ve exhibited work at many kinds of venues from small-town art fairs to group museum shows, from newspaper editorial pages to sidewalks. Media have included graphic novels, posters, paintings, sculpture, and some old-school forms like comic strips, editorial cartoons, zines and leaflets. I also like making things that people can use in daily life, like calendars, stickers and greeting cards.
My life experiences have shaped the elements of my current artistic style/voice, including:
- Explicit political content comes from decades of protesting capitalism-imperialism and trying to organize for global working class-led revolution.
- 25 years of drawing editorial cartoons, comic strips and graphic novels have given me the tools/habits of simplicity, straightforward messages, humor, and combining images with words.
- Tropical plants & creatures plus bright colors appear in my artwork due to a lifetime of living in the sunny coastal tropics of urban South Florida. (On my dad’s side I’m a third-gen resident of Fort Lauderdale, occupying land earlier inhabited by the Tequesta people).
- Echoes of cute-animals-and-smiling-flowers folk art motifs and children’s book illustrations from Germany, where my mom is from. This side of my ancestry has also made me very alert to the dangers of fascism and war.
Originals and papers are archived at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University.
