Edie Everette has drawn the I Am An Artist series since Pyragraph first launched in early 2013. She is also the artist behind our T-shirts and just about any other Pyragraph material that looks any good, so it’s safe to say we adore her. Edie has been recently featured in Hyperallergic, plus she will be launching her new book at Short Run, Seattle’s Comix & Arts Festival on November 15, so we felt it time to ask her What’s Your Deal?

1. What kind of art do you do?

I make cartoons using a digital tablet—I guess that’s what they call “progress.”

2. Tell me about your background as an artist.

I have made cartoons about this. I got attention for making art as a child and kept making work for that reason as an adult. Alas! Making art from a place of ego and fear doesn’t work. My visual art was empty at the center and so I never got as far with it as I wanted or thought I should. I finally let go of all of that and started cartooning again (I had made comic books as a kid).

Cartooning is a much better fit for my nature; I never liked having static work in one place where hardly anybody saw it. Plus I can seamlessly weave into the drawings my love for humor, politics and culture. I actually see life as one single panel cartoon after another!

3. What was the worst show you ever participated in? Dish all the juicy bits.

In my early 20s I did a cool, life-size, nude self-portrait on paper using black oil stick (I loved the German Expressionists back then, naturally) in which I was biting my forearm, sort of pulling up the skin. This black and white drawing was installed in a group show at a tavern and the installer lit it with a green bulb. I was upset at the time, but when I think back it might have made it better?

4. Who are your favorite artists at the moment?

My long-time pal Jeffry Mitchell, my friend from high school Charles LeDray, Saul Steinberg and Charles Burchfield.

5. What’s the most helpful tip you could share with aspiring artists?

Make the ugliest, messiest stuff you can. This allows the only thing you have that nobody else does to surface, namely originality and authenticity. Keep your brain and inner critic away until the last possible moment. Like Gertrude Stein said, “Why make something if you already know what it looks like?”

More of Edie’s work: