Resistance as re-existence

A comic about a woman, the sea and freedom

If you’d like to buy prints of my art, commission an illustration, collaborate on a comic, or just catch up on a call to discuss how we can work together, write to me. I promise it’ll be fun.

1. Let’s begin backwards. Yesterday I took myself to go look at some art after a really long time. I deprived myself of this joy for months because of reasons that are now ridiculous: It felt too indulgent to go to a gallery when the world is on fire. I decided I should spend my time looking for work, seeking clients, sending out pitches, not waste it in a reverie before canvas, cloth and clay. At the very least, I felt should be making my own art instead of looking at other people’s already Very Good and Very Famous art.

2. All of this is now ridiculous because I have remembered a world on fire needs art and artists. It needs people who see, and people who make you look at the thing you’ve been avoiding (the thing that exists inside of you as much as it does in the world). I realised that I need art because: art and artists reveal the bars of the cage. When someone breaks out of their own prison, they remind you that you do not need anybody’s permission to be free.

3. Please re-watch Exit through the gift shop if you have seen it before, and if you haven’t, what are you waiting for? This is the documentary I think of when I worry that I am somehow failing at Being an Artist. This film was made by a man named Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant obsessed with filming street art. Guetta follows trails of graffiti legends leading all the way up to Banksy, who is impressed with Guetta’s dedication to documenting his art form. Guetta follows Banksy around, Banksy begins to trust him. At this point, a strange alchemical exchange occurs: Guetta starts making his own art: street graffiti, stickers, stencils, more and more. He blows up as a commercial artist. His work sells for thousands of dollars, he is asked to design an album cover for Madonna. Banksy, once the muse and subject of Guetta’s film, ends up in the editing room, cutting through hours and hours of Guetta’s unedited footage to make and release the documentary.

4. I love this film for the same reason I took myself to the gallery: art makes people porous and warps the boundaries between seeing and being. It allows for the possibility of ideas that seem ridiculous and foolish because they are unselfconscious, to transform into something sublime.

5. I leave the gallery with my defences lowered, my shoulders relaxed, my gaze softened. I am willing to be naive again, alive to the dappled light of August, the breeze off the river, the man blowing bubbles on the riverbank, that his daughters crash into with glee. I am the parent crafting fragile futures. I am the laughing child who knows only the pleasure of right now. I am the neon-lit bubble, momentarily perfect then gone.
   I re-exist, and so, I resist.

   ---

   Quick updates before this week’s comic. The last time I wrote to you, I told you I was working on a logo design for Giovanni Capuano’s Traditional Chinese Medicine services — and I’m thrilled to say that we arrived at the perfect logomark for AcuGio, inspired by running water, acupuncture points, meridians and the ‘G’ in Gio. You can see the design here, and write to me if you’d like to see how this design process unfolded.
   
   This past week, I’ve been storyboarding a short film called Spirit and Bone, a gritty action comedy based in London. If you’d like to see what that process looks like, you can check it out here.
   
   I felt incensed and then a bit embarrassed about leaving an upset comment on this post by Brown History, a cool newsletter with hundreds of thousands of followers. I try (very hard) not to get drawn into comments section sniping, but I can’t understand why they insisted on using AI for a lovely piece about brown women and nighties that I or a hundred other wonderful illustrators would have been happy to draw and design for them.
   
   If you have a project that needs graphic design, illustration, a storyboard artist, or a creative brain to think things through, please get in touch with me, I will offer you sliding scale rates. You do not need shitty AI art.
   
   Next week is going to be amazing. This newsletter is going to have essay-comic combination on: feeling like an alien in the world of wellness experiences, what home feels like + a review of Do Ho Suh’s exhibition at the Tate Modern.
   
   Isn’t it nice to know that we have something to look forward to together?
   
   Sending you waves of peace and a reminder not to lurk in the comments section (that reminder is for me).
   
   More soon,
   Nish