self-portraits
2023 in review, 2024 on the horizon
I tend to shrink away from making things I can’t immediately define or justify, as if they won’t hold up to outside scrutiny, and this contributes in a huge way to creative blocks. In 2024, one major goal is just to pay attention to what feels authentic, sit with ideas longer, and trust that the words will materialize. (And also to write a lot more, in a longer form, for a larger audience. TBD!)
One initially hard-to-define thing that made a comeback in the past couple of months is the self portrait. I used to take a lot of them as a lonely young person - they were a way to insert magic into a life that I couldn’t control, and to prove that I actually existed. (Also, peak Tumblr fodder, amirite??)
They faded away because I couldn’t let go of how self indulgent they felt. I already drew so many comics about my life. Why did I, or anyone else, also need to see my face? (lol)
Being alone with my thoughts was a little overwhelming at the residency, so I did a 180 and made a point of drawing self portraits every day and also I spent some time remembering how fun it was to take them.
It again operated as a reminder that I exist, and that I somehow need to keep acknowledging that, if any of this is to continue.
There has been a lot to celebrate this year and a lot to mourn. I’m not the same person going into this year as the one exiting it. How do you hold being a cartoonist/artist who makes observational things and thinks about her little life day in and day out, how do you celebrate your small wins, how do you gather shreds of memories from your self-obsessed 13-year-old diaries into a manuscript, when at the same time the world is burning, when Christmas brings only warm rain, with the human rights and identities of loved ones and neighbours increasingly under fire, with genocide, incomprehensible violence, suffering and heartrending loss filling your feed every day? It feels insane, and yet. I take comfort in the art of others when things are intolerable. I work to expand my capacity for empathy, dialogue and critical awareness of the world around me, and to share that. I cling to the notion that love is at the core of everything I make, and it’s how I hold and communicate the hope that tomorrow will be better than today.
And so if getting comfortable with my interiority via self-portrait is one way that this gets done, I say, why not, let’s do more of it.
I wrote and made a lot of things that i’m proud of this year, but it feels odd doing an exhaustive self-congratulatory post about all of it now (to see things, you can scroll thru the archives or my New Yorker contributor’s page). Nonetheless, here are some highlights from the year, with links to corresponding Substack Posts.
Winter NY posts / Summer NY post (my visit to NY in July inspired my bouldering comic, my Met Museum comic, and the full-page comic in December’s special cartoons & puzzles issue about happy hour)
“Crying about Everything Everywhere All At Once sweeping the Oscars” post
Writing Angst post. (From January to August, I wrote, thumbnailed, and illustrated a 75 page graphic novel pitch, only to scrap the entire thing shortly before heading to my artist’s residency in November. Not pictured: all the hours lying on the floor, sobbing.)
Thank you, eternally, for reading. Onwards to a brighter 2024.
xo Zoe