Artist Statement

I like cartoons. Cartoons can do anything.

When I look at the world, it is nothing like a cartoon, yet cartoons have the ability to emulate it. I wondered how it could just create anything, and then just roll with it. Characters can have over-the-top personalities or very down-to-earth realistic ones. Backgrounds can give off the feel of being in a real setting, or one that is too vibrant to exist outside itself. I think that cartoons are impressive in these ways, because they still find a way to relate itself to the world. I find myself able to sympathize with cartoon characters, curious about what it would be like to live in the fantasy world, wonder how even the most unrealistic cartoon can reflect meaning on the world around me. Cartoons can say and do whatever they want, and they have the freedom to explore any perspective, any trend, anything that pertains to people.

As I am, I’m not much of an “artist” as an “enthusiast.” I explore cartoons a lot in my free time, typically focusing on animated works. Although I have dabbled with drawing a little bit (and hope to get back to it), I mostly observe the way cartoons are crafted, looking at things like tone, mood, color shading, the way the characters are made, among other things, and over time I began to realize how cartoons showed me a lot of different things about the world, and forces me to recognize how vastly different everything and every person in the real world is, as well as highlight patterns and problems in relation to the way humans behave. As someone who focuses on humanity as a whole, my biggest goal as an artist is to try and show others the information that cartoons have shown me.