ehj3

[ehj3]

WERE THIS A PLAY

“Don’t tell them too much about your soul. They’re waiting for just that” —Jack Kerouac What do a flood plain near a big city and windy moor not near one have in common? Nothing, nothing rather than something. This architectural folly is therefore more a surrealist conundrum than postmodern bricolage. The minimalist “glass house” part is inspired by Edith Farnsworth’s 1951 floodplain-sited…

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#anti hero #architectural folly #dolmen #farnsworth house #glass houses #jack kerouac #man of action #megalith #menhir #neo-liberalism #post modernism #shaggy rogers #significant other #surrealism #who&039;s afraid of Virginia Woolf

[ehj3]

SOMETIMES A CIGAR

This drawing is just one of those ideas—AGAIN!—that happens spontaneously while doing something else requiring little concentration—in this case, journaling—allowing enough mental space for ideas like this to congeal into an image quite easily. They then need to be written up, drawn out, and posted away to make room for the next ones. Art chores. Here are domesticated versions of my characters…

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#art #damsels in distress #defense mechanisms #dogma #ego #eidolon #enframing #ethics #existence precedes essence #heroes #id #journaling #monsters #platitudes #psycho-analysis #scapegoat #stereotypes #straw man #superego

[ehj3]

SEWERS AND LADDERS

“Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become.” —Heraclitus What you see here is a lifelong version of the game of “Chutes and Ladders” going back from the 1943 americanized, infantilized version of a 19th century British game board game “Snakes and Ladders” to the ancient Indian game Moksha Patam when the “chutes” or “snakes” represented the consequences of…

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#board games #careers #Erik Erickson #friendship #life #lifes illusions #middle age #moral tales #nature or culture #old age #parody #partners #snakes and ladders #stages of life #vices #virtues #youth

[ehj3]

ART AND ARCHETYPE

“Any legend, any creature, any symbol we ever stumble on, already exists in a vast cosmic reservoir where archetypes wait.”  —Guillermo del Toro It’s lizards and aliens now, but when it was just a couple of sentences recording a fleeting idea last week, it was apes and robots. But as I sketched it out in photoshop, it seemed better to exaggerate the dichotomy. After all, we humans are one kind…

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#archetypes #art #being #Clarke&039;s third law #corporate greed #dehumanization #extraterrestrial beings #imago #magic #monetization #reptile brain #space aliens #sublimation #technology #ufo #unconscious

[ehj3]

  NO-VIZ VEST, SOME DAY BEST

 “By the mere appearance of the Other, I am put in the position of passing judgment on myself as on an object, for it is as an object that I appear to the Other.” —Jean-Paul Sartre Such a vest is worn by a hooded outsider slouching down a residential street. We see no face in the hood nor hands in the pockets. There may not be anyone in there at all. But the point of the drawing is just that,…

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#being for self #existentialism #hi-viz vests #liminal space #no-face #nothingness #others #psycho-analysis #spirited away #thinking thing

[ehj3]

MEDDLING KIDS

“Every man, it seems, interprets the world in the light of his habits and desires” but also “The world of most men is given to them by their culture” ― Richard Wright, The Outsider I was originally gonna try to make this political, you know, have the suit and siren in it, Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty, too, I even thought I could fit tr*mp and some MAGAs in. But that was too much of a stretch. I…

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#anxiety #beatnik #being and nothingness #cartoon #colin wilson #comic relief #commentary #dobie Gillis #fifth wheel #irony #maynard g. krebs #Nietzsche #nostalgia #outsider #parody #pleasure principle #reality principle #richard wright #scooby-doo #shaggy rogers #sitcom

[ehj3]

TEMPUS FUGIT

“At all the more important moments while he was telling his story his face took on a very strange, composite expression. I could only interpret it as one of horror at pleasure of his own of which he himself was unaware. He proceeded with the greatest difficulty.” —Sigmund Freud There were four of “friendships becoming…”  four-fers in the to-do list with 30 or so ideas above them. One I already…

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#adulthood #alienation #anger #betrayals #defense mechanisms #desire #distance #fear #freud #friendship #guilt #middle age #Murakami #nostalgia #relationships #reminescence #separation #technology #Tempus Fugit #texts #toys #wishful thinking

[ehj3]

PHONEY PERSONAE

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. / I do not think that they will sing to me.” —T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915) “To the Sirens first shalt thou come, who beguile all men whosoever comes to them. Whoso in ignorance draws near to them and hears the Sirens’ voice, he nevermore returns”—Homer, The Odyssey, book 12 (8th cent. BCE) This one was going to be…

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#carl jung #hypocrisy #masks #mermaids #middle aged #Odyssey #passive-agressive #persona #prufrock #retired #roles #sirens #society #the play&039;s the thing #theater #youth

[ehj3]

NO VACANCY

“Dragons of the prime, / That tare each other in their slime” —Alfred Tennyson This is an overview of the world of USA socio-economic politics. It’s an overt statement of the way things are. Such statements, the actual display of a “no” sign, are never this overt out there, our socio-economic-political leaders string us along as it’s to their advantage for the rest of us to be optimistic, but in…

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#american dream #art world #big business #blogging #capitalism #cartoons #eminence grise #entrepreneurs #mountebanks #politcs #proletariat #USA

[ehj3]

A MOTTE AND A MOAT

“It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.”“The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.”“A man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.” “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer We all—except Arthur—try to fit in, to find others…

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#Arthur Schopenhauer #camaraderie #empathy #fantasy #good old days #memories #middle aged #motte and bailey #reciprocal altruism #ROI #social beings #society #youth

[ehj3]

OUT OF THE PICTURE

“What a man is begins to betray itself when his talent decreases—when he stops showing what he can do. Talent, too, is finery; finery, too, is a hiding place.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche I was gonna draw anything but another one about “The Couple.” They are, as you well know, Suit and Siren, standing in for Nature vs. Culture (innate vs. learned) or even genericized former bosses and ex-wives. But…

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#art #celebrity #eidolon #hustle #Louis Wain #nature or culture #psychotic #success #talent #value #visionary #wealth #William Blake

[ehj3]

ALIEN ABDUCTION

“Art breaks open a dimension inaccessible to other experience, a dimension in which human beings, nature, and things no longer stand under the law of the established reality principle” —Controversial 20th-century philosopher Herbert Marcuse THIS NEW DRAWING is not a this “is“ that metaphor like usual, but a this “is similar to” that simile, with the “like” or “as” that a simile requires…

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#ADHD #alien abduction #alienation #art #attention #capitalism #confabulations #femme fatale #influencers #marcuse #nature or culture #peintre maudit #social media #theatre

[ehj3]

GOOD ENOUGH MORNING

“Depression is melancholy minus its charms” —Susan Sontag I wake up, that’s good. I can get out of bed, also good. The room is warm and quiet, I can drink my coffee and write in peace. As usual, there’s nothing personal in my email or phone messages, just organizations, entrepreneurs, and politicians asking for money. All are easily ignored. A good enough morning. But then I checked the news—I…

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#art #art therapy #depression #drawing #evil #falling #goodness #media #peace #politics #quiet #safety #the news #writing

[ehj3]

BAD RATTITUDE

“So in every individual the two trends, one towards personal happiness and the other unity with the rest of humanity, must contend with each other.” —Sigmund Freud This drawing is based on one I made decades ago. I called that one “Rat With a Bad Attitude.” It was an ink-on-paper sketch of a rat with half a box, only three sides, strapped to its rear end. A corner, you could say, so the drawing…

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#bad attitude #behaviorism #cubicle farm #lab rats #life #life liberty and the pursuit of happiness #neuroses #operant conditioning #rats #science #skinner #work from home

[ehj3]

SIN TEXT

“That Brain and Hands no longer understand each other will one day destroy the New Tower of Babel.” ― Thea von Harbou, from her 1925 novel Metropolis on which the 1927 film was based  This fantasy image draws together incompatibles. A Medieval cathedral, the movie Metropolis,  the expressionist dystopian film, and ordinary life in the 21st century. Also sacred and secular, head and hands,…

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#cell phones #commodification #cyberspace #dystopia #gothic #increase shareholder value #inequality #medieval cathedrals #metropolis #monetization #religion #seven sins #social media #spectacle #texting #the other

[ehj3]

PLAYING MANY PARTS

“’I am too big to climb and play,’ said the boy. ‘I want to buy things and have fun. I want some money. Can you give me some money?'” ―Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree“ The boy here goes from wishful thinking (top left) to youthful success (top right), but soon enough what success he thought he had doesn’t seem so successful—the view ain’t as good as expected or advertised—and the marks he…

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#art #art making #beltaine #dementia #four seasons #life #loss #meaning #old age #personhood #profit taking #reality #samhain #seven ages of man #the giving tree #understanding

[ehj3]

THRICE VICED

No one ever reached the worst of a vice at one leap. —poet Juvenal Rising above a storm-tossed sea of hands and symbolic ephemerals are three columns, one each of the three Greek orders. On the Doric, the oldest and simplest design, a siren performs. On a Corinthian, as you would suspect as it’s the gaudiest of the orders, you know who orates. Atop the Ionic, the middle order favored by…

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#art #artists #betrayal #capitalism #consumerism #deception #desire #greed #love #lust #odysseus #pride #psycho-analysis #siren #stylites #work