Aug 30, 2019
“People will always need art in their lives.”: Alexandra Bowman, Catapult Artist for August
“Working for myself is all about balance. Although illustration is my career and passion, I still need to have a life outside of art-making.”
“Working for myself is all about balance. Although illustration is my career and passion, I still need to have a life outside of art-making.”
“Some stories just flow out of you and you try to keep up as you write them. This story was not like that.”
“When you feel like you have no power in a relationship, withholding becomes one of the only ways you can maintain the illusion of agency.”
“Inspiration came from the stupid pencil jar our family had when I was growing up.”
“It started with a voice—the young narrator telling me about her name.”
“For me, I guess fairytales are where I am simultaneously most at home, and most at odds with the world around me.”
I think what I love about illustration is that there are so many ways to challenge myself.
“‘Illustrator’ is just the easiest catch-all for many jobs—which again, I’m rather restless so it’s worked out great that I never get bored!”
By leaving her job as a lawyer and taking a leap of faith to become a full-time illustrator, Sirin Thada says, “I was finally honoring a part of me that had been there all along.”
“In college, I think there was this idea floating around that a real illustrator worked all night—and if they weren’t, they were half ass-ing it. [Now,] I like to give my brain some time to absorb and to rest in equal measure.”
Filling that blank space is a mix of excitement and agony.
“Don’t focus on what’s popular; focus on what’s there for you to try.”
“I’ve wrapped my business model around my kiddo and his schedule and changing needs. That has been a decision I’ve never regretted.”
“Conveying emotions, narratives, stories. This, I believe, is at the core of all art.”
“Art is able to go straight to a person’s very core—a place other channels simply cannot reach.”
“I wanted the book to celebrate what it means to live your life fully and startlingly awake.”
“If I see the sun come up once in a while, it makes me feel good, like I accomplished something no one else did.”
“You can fall in love with a place in a way that’s just as made-up and selective as how you fall in love with a person.”
“I feel any person who has to deal with losing the one person who is their world has every right to do whatever it takes to self-preserve, even when that includes deflection and denial.”
“I have always been fascinated by the idea of women being monstrous and beastly because it ruptures the dominant Patriarchal ideal of the shy woman.”
