TIGER BALM

I’m obsessed with spot illustrations, as just a brief perusal of this illustration gallery will show you. There’s something about a simple object rendered in textured crayon, pastel or watercolor that conjures the nostalgia of my childhood filled with storybook drawings. These singular images were designed to educate children about their names or functions or relationship to the world.

Similarly, I’ve been rediscovering this approach to discovery in my own work, by creating collages of the discrete images that I’m compelled to draw, by virtue of their strikingly graphic labeling, or simple beauty of design, or functional utility in my life that makes it all the more beautiful — to me, anyway. In this piece, I’d been playing around mentally with the story of Little Black Sambo and the tigers chasing themselves into butter. Simultaneously, the classic home remedy of tiger balm had worked its way into my consciousness because I’d been admiring its graphic label style (look it up). The other drawings were also created along the same time, and when I begin moving them together, I couldn’t help but notice a theme of “things that help me adult and soothe my tired tiger brain.”