The Power of the Pause (and cute animals)

An inspiring conversation with experimental comix artist, illustoria's creative director and poetical sketchbook surrealist Elizabeth Haidle.

Poem-Comix by Elizabeth Haidle

I had been trained as an illustrator to solve the client’s problem, but, she asked herself, what about my problems?

I talked to a new friend (?), colleague (?), the other day who while speaking on the phone to me from Portland was moving drawings of donkeys around on her computer screen with a stylist. Beth Haidle is busy. She agreed to talk with me last week only on the condition that she might have to multitask because she is working on a book, making art, and cartoons, and being a mother, and friend, and seems to be both a creative and editorial director at illustoria which might be my new favourite magazine, as well as being an author and illustrator of a giant pile of books and comics. All of this is a bit ironic because the thing that drew me to Beth was her was eloquent championing of doing less. People in the inky-illustrationy world may be familiar with Inktober which gives you a new prompt every day to draw something with ink. If you are not familiar with that, you may be familiar with some other internet prompt that tries to get you doing a thing to make yourself better every hour or every day and ends up sometimes making you feel that you are just falling behind. So Haidle came up with #untobering which made me laugh and then contemplate more seriously— how work and rest fight with, or learn to live with, each other. I love the topic of permission to do less.

And love the feeling I get from Haidle’s work of balance. Her comics are sequential but also circuitous. Non-fiction but also dreamlike and imaginary. Heavy and philosophical but also light and everyday. In the best sense they are realist—if you accept that realism, when fully felt, rolls out surrealistically. I also like that she is a creative director and an educator and that she works in both pen and pixel and that her multi-hyphenate title is more a function of freedom and exploration than it is being stuck between disciplines.

Anyway I am a fan. I asked her first about what happened to the whole taking a break thing that she was embracing last fall through untobering. “Well,” she said, “I know how the pendulum swings.” Then ended up needing that pause. “Now I’m looking at 10-12 hour work days for the next few months,” she said not actually sounding that nervous.

Elizabeth Haidle Work in Progress for Tundra Books

She showed me what she was working on now. The donkeys, beautifully rendered in satisfyingly scratchy pencil, were looking adorable and kind of milling around a big sign that said INTERMISSION. I want to bring back the intermission she said, Like in the analog era when they had to change the reels of film. I said, Well, they do still have intermissions in the theatre. She said, The donkeys were inspired first by the carnivalesque surrealism of Monte Python backed-up by a University of Hiroshima study showing that people’s attention improves after looking at cute animals. The researchers used puppies but she figured the big eyes of donkeys would work just as well. Cuteness, they discovered, brings out a nurturing instinct —this cute thing must survive!— and the instinct sharpens focus leading to improved concentration. The book that Elizabeth is working on (coincidently with our mutual friend Kyo) is about how to draw and the intermission in the middle will act both as pause in the lessons and a setting the stage for more intentional learning.

Excerpt from The Pipers a graphic novel by Elizabeth Haidle and her brother Paul du Coudray based on a story by Philip K Dick

Elizabeth quickly sketched out her childhood (Oregon, middle child, suburbs, zipline through a swamp and a rope swing over a cliff at a Christian retreat centre, retrospectively dangerous lawn darts, a rough and tumble harmony-friction with two brothers who she was and is very close to, a successful lithographer dad). Out of these origins she felt like the two most important building blocks for her were, 1) Boredom: Time with nothing really going on leading to freedom to do what you were into for as long as you wanted 2) Surface area: a big table that you don’t have to clean up at the end of the day lets you explore art in a more continuous way and makes art not hidden but a part of the sweep of life.