Try Not to Get Too Attached
Description
Using line drawings, colour and text, Robin Richardson transposes the sensibility of poetry into illustrated works, creating bite-sized, artistic meditations on the terribly wonderful, malleable and absurd experience of being alive. Richardson's intuitive works--inspired by medieval illuminated manuscripts--are drawn from fleeting, conscious contact with various notions and emotions; they feel their way around meaning and what it is to be human.
It's here, amongst animal imagery and Jungian psychological concepts, that the viewer can, if not careful, become lost in a collection of unsettling yet playful art: themes of loss, fear and euphoria are materially manifested through felt pen and pencil crayon. Within these works of art are scraps of consciousness, demons brought into the light of day and shared as if to say, clearly: you are not alone.
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Person
ROBIN RICHARDSON is the author of three collections of poetry, including Sit How You Want (named one of the best books of the year by CBC Books and winner of the 2019 Trillium Book Award for Poetry), and is Editor-in-Chief at Minola Review. Her work has appeared in Salon, POETRY, The American Poetry Review, The Walrus, Hazlitt, Best Canadian Poetry, and Tin House, among others. She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, and a BD in Design from OCAD University. She has won the Fortnight Poetry Prize in the U.K., The John B. Santorini Award, The Joan T. Baldwin Award, and has been shortlisted for the CBC, Walrus, and ARC Poetry Prizes, among others. She lives in Toronto.