JOHN TOMLINSON

THIS ARGUMENT IS BETWEEN ME AND ME

Am I an angry man?

People ask me that.

Because I prefer that the viewer interpret my work from a personal perspective and experience, I don’t answer that literally.

 

I am a good natured person, generous and witty.

I often get outraged and angry, but I rarely hate and when I do it's directed at individuals and groups that hurt other people.

I am familiar, as most men and women are, with "small vexations continually repeated." (Samuel Johnson)

I address the outrages committed by men towards men in more intimate and daily situations.

 

The self-named men's liberation movement , "giving voice to men" has engendered an "army of trolls and haters" and extreme misogynists. Such movements make much of men being able to release emotions, cry and hug each other, but almost nothing about how men treat men badly.

(see "Mad Men", Mariah Black, Mother Jones magazine, January+February 2015, p17 )

 

I am quite happy with my life.  I think that life on Earth is a miracle.

I see art as a visual philosophy within that miracle that asks questions but rarely answers them and ought not be expected to.

In that way, I hope that my drawings provoke the viewer to ask questions about their lives and life on Earth.

 

I have a history as a male in the 20th and 21st centuries and vivid memories of my father, my brother, my uncle, my grandfather, my male teachers and mentors, my male friends, my male Army drill sergeants, my male bosses, and all of my male protagonists and antagonists encountered in a variety of private and public situations.

 

I have an ear for what men say to men. I have an eye for their facial expressions when saying what they do and how they say it. Their voices, their expressions provide the rhythm to the sound of my drawing.

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