Zelfmedelijden is Dutch for Self-pity. The person is drowning in their own self-pity. They are depressed and poison themselves with their pity. It hurts, but is hard to stop. Addicted to pain.
September 2019, acrylics on canvas
Zoomed in shot of "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead". Created in 2012. Size: 22” x 30” / Micron Pens on Archival Paper. This piece was all drawn freehand - no rulers or measuring tools were used to create this artwork. 2019 kinda looked like this. It had a lot going on. Lots of changes. A close friend of mine predicted 2019 would be "The year of change", and she was right… at least up in my neck of the woods. Anyway, it has been full of good, fun and challenging things – all worth while. Excited to dive into 2020.
(HB pencil on 147mm x 96mm card) An image used on my 2019 Christmas cards of a character taken from the story included within them (the story has the same title as above). You can read it here: https://www.skavart.co.uk/2019/12/merry-christmas-2019-bollocks-to.html
Mixed media (pencil, markers, brush pens, collage) on A3. This is based on some old doodles from around 2003 (I think). I glued the old thing on a bigger paper and completed it this Christmas/New Year 2019.
Emotionally speaking, this is definitely the hardest pieces I've made so far. On July 18th, 2019, an arson attack on Kyoto Animation's Studio 1 left 36 dead and 34 injured, one of the deadliest mass casualty incidents in Japan since the end of WWII. KyoAni has some of the best working conditions in the industry and have made some of the most iconic anime to date, including Clannad, A Silent Voice, and the show that got me started on anime, Violet Evergarden (as seen in this drawing). I sent this drawing to them through their website, and there's a good chance it was displayed along with thousands of other fan submissions in Kyoto this past November as part of a public memorial service. While this was a tragic blow to the company and community, they're healing and getting back to their feet, and I can't wait to see what they create next.
Even if it is (in my case at the least) just doodling away to the point of allsorts in the hopes it’ll make at least one person a) happy b) perked or c) amused, do good and be good in wake of the current shitstorms in the making.
More for another day...
