Drawing Bunnies

I started drawing bunnies because I was trying to cheer up a friend who had a bad case of the blues. These first bunnies were actually animal shapes with smiley faces in them, hovering around the head. I got a kick out of them myself because up until that point I was mostly drawing erotic fruit, guts and psychedelic bullshit. When I was ten I would proudly draw big nosed cartoon characters. I would practise Daffy Duck as a pre-teen. As I got older, I got more pretentious and it was all gothic eyeballs and stewed intestines.
    In my early twenties, when I drew a funny animal cartoon it was all angst, sweat drops and panicked expressions on the little critters. In hindsight my friend suffering from depression helped turn me around. I let my art be as light as I could be at times. I wasn't a heavy dude but I drew heavy nightmares and visions. The creatures were twisted organic structures bound with straps, existing in a possibly positive space but serving more as gross-out material than anything else. I loved the supple forms of mangos and pears with labial folds and tumescent piping. Fun stuff, alien porn.
    The bunnies, called Glees, trotted in and said, hey bozo, chillax. They pointed their fingers at humanity and mocked us. They mocked me. They turned, like Bugs before them, into tricksters, aligned Chaotic Good with a wicked helping of Chaotic Neutral or just downright Neutral. They took the piss out. Nervy The Dog, a character I created that featured in maybe two stories total, was a stress case freaking out over everything. The bunnies couldn't care less. They were easy going and happy. Happy, gleeful. They were also easy to draw. When I drew human faces, they invariably were streaked with a thousand lines of weariness, shadows and spots - again with the heavy. The bunnies were smooth as the sexy fruit without the naughty bits poking through. Fast and easy, and cheerful.
    I used them in paintings and comics, I had them embroidered, I cut-out tin can collages, I made papier maché bunnies. If I was faced with a new medium I would cut my teeth with a bunny. I knew the design well enough to try it out in any material.
    Of course people thought I had a thing for rabbits. Couldn't give a damn about rabbits. I'm more of a squid or great cat guy. Rabbits and hares are amazing animals of course, like all animals, but I never had a soft spot for them. The very first drawing I did that led to the bunnies actually was a blocky chunk with Mickey Mouse ears. The bunnies I draw today, still called bunnies, look often like mice or dogs or bears or some creature with big ears. My aunt calls the creatures I draw 'bear cubs', she says it in Greek though and I like it. When I first heard her describe them that way a tiny voice almost came up to correct her but it was squashed dead by a greater voice saying, hey that's good.
    I'm not going to start rebranding now, the damned things are bunnies. My wanky side has described them in interviews as not cartoons of rabbits but cartoons of cartoon bunnies. Meta enough for that bong of yours ? In any case the basic bunny form is now a vessel, a vehicle, a platform, a support for any of my scribbling tendencies - unbroken curved lines, sleek and flowing, gestural asemic scratchings, blended gradations, psychedelic auric fade-outs, whatever I want. I can draw a mess of eyeballs and intestines, even some genitalia for god's sake and throw a couple of ears on top and voilà, bunny.
    There were some recent years when I felt like Leonard Nimoy fighting off his Spockhood. I kept the bunnies at a distance, they made cameos in comics but not in any serious art (yes, I know how that sounds, I'm a cartoonist, even a graphic novelist). I am still tired of civilians who think that widely varying cartoon bunnies look like mine, or that they liked that TV show I never worked on. Cartoon bunny taxonomy is vast, and it's pearls before swine if I have so explain the difference between a Garfield and a Heathcliff, let alone Krazy and Bill.
    Last year or so, for a lark and to decorate a new snack bar with lots of toys as decor, I banged out a slew of bunny paintings using cheap dollar store paints and repurposed canvas. It was a blast. I've always been aware of artists who never once stopped presenting their stupid cartoon characters as subjects for painting. I took a detour into douchebag land with all that implies about pride and seriousness. I'm back again, reclaiming my art as, you guessed it, mine. I was never on the career track towards the Tate anyway. I'm not doing coke with a curator unless they are also a friend. And every bit of wisdom I have read regarding art most always states something about following your heart, being true to yourself, doing what you love.
    I love the way these critters stare at me with their huge smiles. I love how they judge me and keep me on my toes. If I'm not careful, they may start breeding like rabbits and take over my life.
   

Altering Iconography

I found a sea shell on Long Beach and my uncle helped me make a small hole in it to pass a string through. It was my first piece of jewellery outside the traditional gold baptismal cross and the ubiquitous blue eye of the sea / evil eye talisman of the Levant. These two symbols, eye and cross, co-exist around many a Hellenic neck, orthodoxy and paganism intertwined.
    I like a cross large, and swinging like medallions should. I've had metal ones, woven leather ones, wooden ones. I'm ok with the cross, not so okay when they have a tortured man affixed to them but I can live with that. I've collected religious iconography since adolescence. I kept an alter of my own design in my bedroom since then. It has moved around, now living semi-neglected over my fully neglected work table. My altars always held Christian, Pagan, Buddhist, Hindu, SF & F icons as well as assorted found items that resonate with me. My painted lead Ral Partha figurines, meant to enhance role playing games, live on my altar today. So does my collection of Magi. The best parts of any nativity scene are the three wise men of the east. Zoroastrian Wizards come to say hey to baby human potential. Magi, magician. My plastic baby Jesus in his manger is surrounded by plastic allies. A witch doctor rattling his shrunken head wand, a great ape standing in for the one true king, Kong. A unicorn has come into the circle. This magic beast has come into it's own in recent years as a true archetype, leading the kids to achieve their dreams no matter what society says about which way they need to swing, medallion or not. There's also a black panther & red fox - guardians for the left and right. Caveman bearing his club stands tall and makes sure no one comes tumbling in neglectful of the ancestors.
    Today, if I was to pray, I'd pray to a triumvirate of powers. The Animals, The Ancestors, The Angels. I think whatever can be cobbled together today of my fractured spirituality can be somehow symbolized by one of these 3 powers. Us humans are part all of that. We would be remiss to neglect one or two or three of these aspects of ourselves and of the living world. Animals & Ancestors are self evident to most people, even the faithless rationalists. Angels, though, tend to be discarded as remnants of some prior world view. I view them as they are, intelligences of planetary, solar or cosmic scale.
    I hung the shell around my neck but the string twisted and the shell edges were sharp and prone to snapping. The shell was retired. I adopted a black string a few short years later, with 3 wooden beads, 1 plastic one and a small metal spring. I wore this day in day out for a decade. I always appreciated the natural side by side with the artificial, a New York Dolls of urban decay decor. It must be somewhere in one of my leather pouches filled with the magic of my youth. The ultimate fate of these collections remains unknown. Part of me wants to trot them out as capital A Art. Not some contrived object but the real deal, the stuff I put together long before I knew someone somewhere could rationalize it as contemporary art. I may bury them in the woods along with other ritual objects no longer in use. Blades, chalices, shadowy books, robes, cords, discs, rings. Buried deep, bundled strong. Sure some stoner may stumble on them, all the better. I'll make sure they've been properly cleansed, rendered inert. If someone needs to use the tools of the ancestors they can do so in good conscience. Only a fool would do so rashly.
    Maybe I'll combine all these details into the body of a statue, left to gather moss on some lawn of future home, greeting all the curious visitors, winking a blind eye to those who see. Come visit, drape a home-made necklace around the satyrs' neck.
   

Day 23

That awkward stage when you know you wanna be freaky but you still don't know how to be freaky so you end up looking like a kid set to random. Shoulder length hair, lime green tuxedo jacket, tie-dyed jeans you had the nerve to wear twice, an assortment of shirts, home decorated. Baubles around the neck and wrists. Sashes, for gods' sake. These growing pains can eventually lead to some balancing act, less high visibility shrieking and more jeans and t-shirts.
    My first foray into fashion statements was a sweatshirt initially light blue but faded into white that I painted a question mark onto. Large and in the front of course. This was the initial spark that would set me off. It was followed by a tourist t-shirt from Kalamata that I'd scrunch up on the garage floor and spray paint with red and blue. Toxic tie-dye. The real tie dye started shortly thereafter and yielded great results. I still balk at that 'fake' hyper swirled dead-head stuff you can get at head shops. Real, detail oriented organic hippie home-made jobs are the best. They went well with my array of hand crafted macrame bracelets I'd learn to make.
    It may be ironic that my first hippie-ish clothes and accessories came from Greece. The first was a blue and white pullover cotton shirt that a classmate, Roger Palewandrem, laughed at and called a rice sack the first time I wore it at school. I was not to be deterred. The rice sack was worn well and I can only thank the gods that I didn't go into full luxurious ethnic circus pattern stylings as I grew. I almost did. Indian cotton shirts can easily lead to billowy button downs decorated like gauche temples. I also dodged a bullet by not being able to find or afford when I did full-length capes. My courage was also limited. The poncho I did wear once or twice was just too big and I felt odd so my mom stitched up the neck hole and it became a throw. Other Greek details were the leather string one could get at any souvenir shop in Kalamata. I bought the stuff by the metre and also picked up ready made macrame bracelets. I say ironic because Greek hippie kids in Montreal don't come by the dozen. My high school was almost 80 % Greek. The kids at school in the mid 80s were predominantly Lumber-Bums, greasy haired, lumber jacket, Ozzie t-shirt, Kodiak boot wearing rockers. Much to my dismay, the summer between grades 10 and 11, they seemed to all turn into Aldo shopping, Azzaro cologne wearing Madonna fans. Their girlfriend shaped them up, the poor saps.
    My gang were budding punks and new wavers, a metal head or two. I was welcome to try things out. I went to the punk matinees in my love beads and I started slam dancing in my desert boots. Though punk shows came and went, that scene wasn't fully mine. Neither were the Tam-tams, the weekly drum circle that was gaining ground. I bought my incense, studied the sixties which eventually led me to appreciate random un-moored freakiness as opposed to the patchouli historical revisionism of the 80s. I met some other freaks, got introduced to Discordianism, zines, the international global mail-art network and that original question mark sweat shirt came to signify exactly what I was to become.