Dear Stranger

Something of mine was posted on drawger.com as part of an online showcase of women illustrators work. The comment that the host made when posting it is rather interesting to me.

I’ve posted this image because it is beautiful and emotional and it serves as an example of the kind of work I’ve been getting and not knowing what to do about adding it to the show.

To my mind, this isn’t conceptual work. This show is meant to strengthen our confidence in thinking in an op-ed kind of way…

…Or is it that we are wired another way and that emotional work is our forte and shouldn’t be messed with? [I hope not*]

[*editted from: I really don't know.]

- Nancy Stahl

http://www.drawger.com/show.php?show_id=36&image_id=1294&view_comments=1#comments

I kind of wish I could respond, but I’m not a drawger member.

I’m not sure about other women, but I know myself. Emotional work is my forte, and I’m not ashamed of that, or scared of it… I stood up for it in art school, and I intend to stand up for it throughout my career. I think it’s sad that there isn’t much of a place for it in mainstream illustration, and that the work that I truly enjoy doing doesn’t seem to translate well into the realm of “conceptual” editorial illustration.

I work with concepts just as well as the best political illustrators. It’s just a different kind of concept. Emotional concepts are under represented in the world of illustration. I don’t know if that’s a gender issue, but it might be.

By the way, I just printed up a couple of hundred promotional post cards with that image on it. Leave me a note if you’d like me to put your address into the mix when I start mailing them out.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 15th, 2008 at 10:20 am and is filed under Notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.