Beyond Order - the Illustrator | Juliette Fogra | EP 157

[Music] I have the great pleasure today of meeting for the first time, oddly enough, the illustrator of my new book, Beyond Order. This is Yulia Fogra, also known as Juliet. We're going to use Julia. It's very nice to meet you.

Very nice to meet you.

My previous book, 12 Rules for Life, was illustrated by Ethan Van Siver, and I liked his illustrations a lot. I thought they were very successful. But he had other opportunities that he was pursuing, and so I was obliged to find another illustrator for Beyond Order. I decided with my team, my daughter, and my family members, actually mostly in discussion, to run a contest online and solicit drawings. I thought that would be entertaining and interesting and perhaps allow someone an opportunity that they might not otherwise have obtained. We received hundreds and perhaps even thousands of proposed illustrations.

Do you remember, Yulia, did I ask for the illustration of a rule or more than one rule? Was that how the contest ran?

No, I know exactly what you asked. You asked for one rule, first rule, and you asked for line drawing.

Ah, so it was a first rule line drawing, right? Because we needed something that would work well in black and white. It's a tricky thing to produce an illustration for a book because whoever's doing the illustration has to know enough about printing to ensure that the illustration prints well and can be reproduced well in print format. So anyways, we looked through a lot of artists' illustrations, and Julia's stood out. I think that the contest was, in consequence, very successful. I'm very pleased with the illustrations. I think they have an interesting fairy tale quality to them, a kind of classic fairy tale quality to them, a Victorian quality as well, which seemed appropriate to the content of the material.

Anyways, we received Julia's entries and then worked with her over... well, the contest was run in March of 2020.

March?

Yep, March, a year ago.

Yes, yes, and a very tumultuous year, which is part of the reason we haven't met. The pandemic lockdown, of course, has kiboshed any plans we might have had to get together. You're based in New York, correct?

Yes.

And so under normal circumstances, I'm going to New York fairly frequently, but of course, I haven't been there for... it's got to be at least two years now. So let's... I'd like to find out some things about you. So the first is, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from, and I'd like to know a little bit about your life.

Yeah, okay, so I was born in Riga, Latvia, one of the trio. There is Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, Baltic countries. We are worth the mix of Poland and Germany, I would say. The old city was built by Germans, but I lived in the area where I was the only Jew. I'm Jewish. I was the only Jew, and the rest of the people were all Russians. There were no Latvians at all. You would see in movies nine-story buildings built like dominoes. It's all dominoes, concrete. I hated it.

I saw a lot of that in Moscow; it's an endless vista of 20-floor high apartments stretching as far as the eye can see in every direction.

Yeah, it's a very unwelcoming architectural manifestation, I would say.

Cold and harsh.

Exactly. And I was young enough to go outside of this neighborhood. If I were 15 or 16, I would be able to start going outside and going alone into the whole city, into cafes, which we had, but I couldn't. So by day, let's go back. So I had a talent for music. My mom was a music teacher, and I had a perfect pitch, luckily. So they tested me and they said I'm perfect for conservatory. I was seven; they put me in a music conservatory. Obviously, no normal kid would choose something like that for their life. It was vicious. It was Latvian training combined with Russian training, what you would see in chess clubs. It was vicious.

So tell us about that. So was that a residential school, or were you still living at home?

I was still living at home.

And how many hours a day would you spend at school and practicing?

So at seven, I went to a regular school and two music schools. It's two different places. I had to travel by chembai. Chembai is something you see in San Francisco, three or four stops, not far away. I had twice a week a class, a two-hour class, and I had to practice every day at home for at least an hour. And that was my life. I also drew, which was a side project. It wasn't taken seriously by anyone, by me.

Your music was taken seriously by you and your parents and everybody around me and kids in school, and I was known as a musician.

And did you take any pleasure in that? Was music good for you, or what?

No, no. It was horrible. I was good at it, but this... I blame the teachers and I blame the school because they would prepare kids for orchestras. They will just process talented kids for orchestras. There was no love of music involved at all; it's something you saw in Jane Eyre—the teachers of Jane Eyre. [Music] Intimidating place, that was the music school. And we were playing classical music only for seven years. It was a classical training, and I found that... I believe in somebody else's tragedy. It was very sad; the music was sad and was not for me. So by the end of the third year, I said I can't do it anymore. I had a crash. I was on the floor crying, and my parents tried to convince me. Nothing worked. My father said he took the liberty of saying he'll get me a puppy when I finish the school, and I finished the school. It was 1991.

And how many more years did you go after that event?

After that, four years.

So you worked four years for your puppy?

Yeah.

Did you get them?

No.

Oh, because I finished it in 1991, when the Soviet collapsed, and we had to leave the country.

Ah, right. So geopolitical restructuring got in the way of your pet?

Yeah, and we left to Israel within the 91. Your family left to Israel, and why did you choose to leave? Why did your family choose to leave in 1991?

Soviet collapse, we left in 1992. The collapse was in 1990, right? It took us time, so we lived through bad times in Latvia. Bad times in terms of food, or anything really, there was no food.

Yeah, people don't know a lot about that post-Soviet period in the West. You know, I have my son-in-law, who is Russian. I think he's about your age. He has some pretty harrowing stories of early 1990s Moscow, being afraid to go to school, not knowing if he was going to come home alive.

Rough. It was a very rough period. A lawless and chaotic period by his account, and for you, you said food shortages?

Yeah. My father stored potatoes and tuna for a year; that's what all we ate because there was nothing on the shelves.

And how did you come across... how did you come across the tuna and the potatoes?

You have to ask my father.

Ah, okay. I don't know. I wasn't involved in his decisions. He stored it in a very cool place on the ground in someone's garage, I think. Bread was buy-tickets. I remember standing in line for an hour to get a piece of bread. We had tickets; you could only get one bread for three days, I think. I could be mistaken—only one piece of bread. There were two choices of bread in Russia throughout the Soviet Union: white bread and rye bread. Nothing else. So I was standing for an hour, and people were spitting and angry, and I was a little girl, but I got this bread, and I'm running home, and my mom is cutting the bread, and it's green, completely green inside.

So that was my life until I was 14. Then we left to Israel.

Did you encounter... you said that you were the only Jewish family, or you said you were the only Jew, a Jewish family in the entire area in the neighborhood? Did you encounter prejudice because of that, or was that an invisible?

So of course, I was bullied to hell.

And so was that a part of the decision to go specifically to Israel?

Yes, and we had no other choices. Germany was close to us, America was close to us. That was the only choice. We didn't know anything about Israel; it seemed like a nice place from where I was. I was very happy because I felt captive for 14 years. I was trying to escape this place at any case, at any price.

How large was your family? Do you have siblings?

So, most of my family was killed during the Holocaust, 40 people. They just brutally killed everybody, and a very small portion left—they survived, and that’s why I'm here. I have one brother.

And so your mom and dad and you and your brother lived in this apartment building in Riga?

Yes.

How big was the apartment that you and your brother and parents lived in?

What they consider in America—it’s a one-bedroom apartment. It’s one room for us and a living room for my parents.

All right. So you moved to Israel in '92.

'92.

And how old were you then?

14.

14. And how long did your family spend in Israel?

My family is still living there.

I think your family's still there. So was that an improvement?

No, not for me. For everybody else, everything seemed to be improving for everybody else but me. I couldn't find my place. I was always not at home until I came to New York, and things have worked out for you in New York.

Absolutely.

Well, that's good. So it's obvious that you're capable of finding a place; it just took a while. So what happened to you in Israel? Why do you think you had difficulty there?

First of all, we came with no language. Second of all, I came from Europe to the Middle East, so it's a matter of mentality. I just couldn't get it; I just couldn't be part of it. And we lived in a very poor area, a very poor area.

What did your parents do in Israel? How did they make ends meet?

So my dad became—he was an engineer—and he started working in some factory. My mom was working at nights in the bakery. It was tough.

So they could find employment, but it was tough?

Yeah, I started working when I was 15. I’ve collected oranges.

So you moved—how old were you when you arrived in Israel?

I was 14, almost 15.

Right, so that tends to be a relatively tumultuous time, and in a girl's life anyway, those teenage years can... and you didn't have... you couldn't speak Hebrew?

I wouldn't speak for two years.

For two years?

Yep. Others could speak three months, just being—just listening, just being on the street. They could speak. It's not how my brain works. I had to collect it for two years, and I couldn't get out anything of my mouth, and that's the problem I have with languages in general.

Yeah, well, that definitely sounds difficult. So you... when did you move to New York? How old were you when you moved to New York?

So in Israel, I stayed for nine years. I've been in the army, which is a separate subject to talk about. Then I finished two years of art school, which was three school—three years—but I only finished two. I was offered by the head of our department; I was offered the job in her private studio, so I just dropped out.

I see. So, and that was—you went to art school, and that was on the basis of your prowess in visual art?

Yeah, it was my dad's idea.

And you had stopped playing the piano by this time?

Oh, I didn't play piano from the moment I arrived in Israel.

And have you played it since?

I've started to play in New York. That was the first thing I bought.

Oh, and have you been able to take any pleasure in that?

Absolutely.

Well, that's great. So that's a happy ending to that story. It's very rough becoming—it can be very rough learning any sophisticated skill because the learning period is often not particularly rewarding. There's so much you have to get by rote. I mean, when kids learn to read, they have to be able to read phrases and perhaps even sentences at something approximating a glance before they take much pleasure in the reading. And so there's this initial period of rather painful apprenticeship that's not necessarily accompanied by intrinsic pleasure and meaning, but if you can get through that, if you're lucky, then once you have the discipline, you can enjoy the skill. I'm glad to hear that that worked out for you.

Are you a good pianist?

I'm good; I just stopped playing classical music. I was not meant to be.

And what music do you play, and what music do you enjoy?

Rock, pop, house.

Uh-huh, anything but...

Right. So you have a modern sensibility musically?

Yep.

What about bands? Who do you like?

Oh, and there is a reason for that. My dad bought me a recorder for cassettes, took a cassette player— that was a... I was 11 or 12. Max and Zuka's cassettes came along with it. One was Queen and another Billy Joel.

Which Queen album?

I wish I remembered. Was it A Night at the Opera? Did it have Bohemian Rhapsody on it?

I think so.

Yeah, that's A Night at the Opera. That's definitely their best album.

Yeah, and that's the first thing I listened to, and I remember just sleeping next to it. My player was here; I couldn't do anything else. I was possessed. I was completely obsessed. I've never heard or seen anything as beautiful. There was no beauty in my life; it was all monochrome; everything was black and white in this area.

Yes, physically. There was no color. Even the clothes were all black or dark brown or dark blue.

What are winters like in Riga?

Cold—minus two, 20 Celsius is the coldest—and we have to go to school. I remember that.

So you moved alone to New York?

Okay, so let's go back. You said that you you went to art school on the basis of your talent as a visual artist despite the fact that that wasn't something that was that you really had concentrated on with regards to training. You were trained as a child as a musician, not as a visual artist. How did you pick up that talent?

I was the best in the class.

How did they pick it up?

First of all, I didn't want to go to the School of Graphic Arts because of computer training. I said, "I'm never going to touch this thing. Technology? I can't; I'll never acquire something like that. That's too much of a skill, and technology is not for me." So they said, "First year, you'll always only have to draw by hand. Everything we're gonna do, we're gonna do by hand, no computer involved," and they bought me—they bought me completely with that. So first year, everything we've done was drawn.

And did you have to submit a portfolio, I presume, as a condition of admittance?

Yes.

And you'd be drawing on your own? Did your parents support that, or were they opposed to it, or was it neutral?

Before that, they supported it.

Yeah, okay. Oh, and they didn't see that as something...?

No, my parents were musicians. They were the hipsters of the area, considered the hipsters. They were the free spirits; the art was supported.

And how much time did you spend drawing when you were a kid?

A lot. I was not just drawing; I was making mosaics.

Mosaics out of what?

Out of wooden colorful different shaped... What you have to do is just imagine what you want to build and just go for it from the center out and the size. I've built it. It was the size of almost a small rug. It was that big of a bag. And I would spend two to three hours. It was a blessing.

So then you went to art school, and you spent the first year drawing by hand, and that was okay. You were afraid of technology or loath to use it. So that was that. What happened in the second year?

I just grasped it; I just went along with it.

And so you learned to use—completely fine—you became fluent with the use of computers then?

Better than everybody else.

Ah, so what do you think made you believe, to begin with, that you weren't able to do it or that you weren't suited for it?

I'm just afraid of technology.

Well, you should be. Everybody should be afraid of technology. But it's still probably better to know how to use it. I think you should be less afraid of it, perhaps if you know how to use it. It's very powerful. I mean, technology has disrupted my life in a manner that is absolutely not only inconceivable but perhaps irrecoverable. But, anyways, you know, it's brought many benefits as well, but it's so powerful. You're taking a tiger by the tail, or perhaps something much bigger than a tiger.

So you're playing dragons?

Yeah.

Yeah, or maybe they're eating you; it depends. So, alright, so you learned. You became a sophisticated user of technology in your second year of art school. So what advantages and disadvantages were there to bringing computer technology to your artistic endeavors?

Photoshop is a unique thing. I would never be able to layer up players the way I do or imagine things the way I imagined before I started. I don't think of graphics in terms of non-Photoshop anymore. It's an unbelievably powerful program; it’s like a factory. Photoshop, there's no limit to what you can do with an image. It's actually... it's kind of a terrifying program in some sense because it can... if you're the least bit obsessive, it can pull you in and trap you forever because there's no limit to the number of variations you can produce. And I mean, I'm a rather amateur Photoshop user. I've used it a fair bit, but I certainly haven't explored all of its capabilities.

You can spend a lifetime doing that.

Absolutely. I hope doing that; that's my goal.

So, okay, so you finished two years of art school, and then you were offered a position by the director of the program?

Yes.

And that was still in Israel?

Yeah.

And what did she or he... that was a she. What did she have you doing, and why? And did what did she think about your decision to stop going to art school to take your job?

She noticed me. She noticed me, and she came to a graduation, and we had a final project. She was there the whole time, and after the final project, she said, "Can I speak to you?" And I thought I'm in trouble, and she offered me because, first of all, I spoke Russian and she had a client. And second of all, I was good. That's what she told me. I had no idea; I didn't believe anything she said. I was completely living outside of myself at that point.

What do you mean living outside of yourself?

It's hard to describe. I couldn't fit into Israel.

Right. I felt so large for that place, and nobody knew what I'm speaking about. So how long did you work for her?

For four months. Backing up, when I was 15, I met a boy on the street. It was two weeks after I arrived, and that boy is my husband right now. So he left to New York in 2000.

In 2000, and I followed him.

I see. And so was that what stopped you from continuing the job?

Yes.

Uh-huh, that's exactly what stopped me. His leaving, his departure, was devastating.

Did when he departed, had you two planned to meet up again in New York? Was that the other day, and what changed?

He stayed here for three months. He looked. He called me and said, "I'm seeing people, and I don't see them. They are transparent. I'm just looking through them. I don't see any of them. You need to come because I see you."

And so you uprooted yourself from Israel. How old were you?

I was 23.

Again, no English, no language. Only had this ABC, again the same story. Just this time I came along.

But you like New York?

Not right away.

Not right away?

It was tough. It was tough in the beginning, and we had the first child a year later.

I would describe my life as 40 years in the desert; that's exactly what it was.

40?

Even more. 42.

How old are you now?

43. [Music]

That's not many years out of the desert.

No, it's just the beginning. Alright, so you're in New York, and you're learning to speak English. You're newly married; you have a new child.

Yes.

And again, two to three years it took me to start speaking, and I wouldn't. Just the words would scatter around my head. I would just not be able to find them. They're always hiding behind. There's a field, and I know they're there, but they hide behind the rocks. It's very complicated; it's very hard for me to speak because words... I see words; I don't hear words. For me, words are pictures, and I memorize them. When they are in the sentence, I'm being able to reread. That's why it was so good for me that we corresponded because I could reread and I could understand exactly what you mean.

And then did you... when you arrived in New York, did you work as an artist right away?

You did fine?

Yeah. How did you find work? It's hard to find work as an artist. So how did you manage that?

I thought I'm gonna clean the restroom, so I was walking around looking for Orthodox schools or shoes just to clean the bathrooms. That's what I thought I'm gonna do. Two weeks passed, and I went to a photo developing studio. We had some photographs. It was the winter; it was beautiful. I came there, and the guy before me wanted to make some detachment on his old pictures, and the guy in front of me at the desk said, "Yes, we do that, but it's going to take us a month. Come back to us in a month." So I'm getting to the desk and I'm saying, "I can do it in one hour maybe less." He said, "I don't believe you. Let me try." He sat me down, and he had a drawer with probably 10 pictures that were supposed to take him a month to retouch, and I've done it in one day.

He said, "I have somebody in mind." It was a Jewish guy, obviously; they had somebody in mind in New Jersey, which is fun. That's how I got my job, and I stayed there for 13 years.

And so tell me about this place or it was a photo studio?

No, he told his friend, obviously, and he had friends in graphics.

I see more than that. There was a catalogue company that was creating catalogs for mostly jewelry but not only. Mostly jewelry, which is the hardest thing because retouching of jewelry is the hardest thing. We had everything; we had a printing facility under our roof in the same building. We had our photographers who had me, so everything was going on. I was on top of everything; he made me an art director, and I was an art designer and art director, and the company closed up in 2016.

Was it five years ago?

And you managed that? Was your English functional by that point?

Or wouldn't say so; nope. We didn't need to speak a lot. He learned to trust me within a year. He knew; he just knew that everything I do is gonna be lovable, and he knew I'm always right. He just figured it out. Just do that; just do this. I worked three days a week, which was amazing. I got my salary for a week. I had two boys by that time, and I got sick.

Oh, what happened?

Well, I'm not sure; I'm still not sure what happened. I was always sick. I relapsed, and I was destined to stay home, so I stayed home. There was one choice: either I should suffer from pain or I should do something while I'm suffering from pain, and that was the only thing that made me disappear. I forget about the reality; that's the only thing—my Photoshop. I've started doing graphics for no reason.

Okay, so when did this happen?

When I... so you got too ill to work, was that the case? You got too ill to work, and so you were staying at home? When did that happen?

Five years ago.

I'm skipping; I'm skipping.

That's okay. We should move towards the discussion of the drawings anyway. We're getting close to... we're getting close to the present day.

So you became ill about five years ago, yeah? And you did you have to stop?

No, I was ill, but I became very ill. I didn't think I would survive it. I don't want to press you any more than is comfortable for you, but I had no energy at all, zero, and I had two kids, and you talked about pain as well.

Yeah, the pain was tremendous, and then I got, also on top of it, I got fibromyalgia that they couldn't treat. The pain with fibromyalgia, that you can treat it with medicine anyway, so I thought, "What would I do with my life? I'm 40." I was almost 40. Okay, I'll paint with oil paintings on canvas out of the bloom, and it worked, and every painting was better than another. I was keeping it a secret, and my husband said, "You can't keep it a secret. People must see it."

So seeing what? Why? I couldn't grasp the idea of somebody else seeing my work. I've done this for two years, and eventually, I had a show in Chelsea, New York, in the gallery. It didn't go so well, and I knew that I have to switch. It was so hard physically, too.

So hard for me to paint. Too hard to paint. To paint here, so sitting in front of the desk was an option for them. That's how I started doing graphics.

So I'm at Agora Gallery's page?

Yes.

Which will link into this. And there's a number of images there—an orange, a tangerine, my mistake—a painting called Accepted. These are oil on canvas, and I haven't seen them since before. They're as good as I would expect, given your illustrations.

And do you use any digital technology when you're doing your oil paintings?

No, not at all.

So, that's... tell me a little bit about how you go about it.

They're beautiful. I was just trying to copy exactly what I see in a photograph, those things. If you see only... were there cops? You would see it on my website. Cops is my favorite; three cups coffee.

Oh, yes, there are close-ups, so you can see actually up close; they’re enormous, those paintings.

48 by 30.

And these are done from photographs?

Yep.

Wow, I made something similar to this one where you use squares. I redid a famous oil painting, but now I can't remember his name, unfortunately. It’s a reclining nude, and I pixelated it in large cubes and then cut it out of styrofoam, foam core, and layered it like my Maps of Meaning painting. I did about ten of those when I was in my mid-20s, and I haven't done any since.

I like these three at the bottom; they're very reminiscent of that. They're really... they're very intense. Have you been successful as a fine artist? Have you been able to make a living?

No, no.

Well, it's very difficult to make a living as a fine artist. I was able to spend everything I had in my savings.

Yes, huh?

Yeah, and these people asked for... they call them Giclée prints; yes, print on canvas and special color, not just regular prints. You have done some money but not for living, maybe?

No, no.

And have you been successful at selling your original images?

No, not at all.

And any idea why? I mean, apart from the general impossibility of doing that, right? It’s a very finite market, and it's extraordinarily difficult for a fine artist to make a living. It happens almost never, so it's not surprising. But the images are a very high quality, in my opinion.

That doesn't necessitate success. I mean, part of the problem of being an artist is that you have to compete with the production of all artists, living and dead, and it takes a long time to build a reputation. You have to know how to... you have to know the gallery system, and you have to be able to market yourself, and you have to be able to sell yourself, and—or someone else has to do it.

Exactly.

And I was not ready for that. I didn't like this combination of words: selling yourself. I knew I had to sell myself, and I didn't want to do that.

Well, you know, this is a good place for this discussion, I would say. It might be useful for people who are listening who are artistically inclined. It's not the right thing; it's not the right way to construe it as selling yourself. What you have to understand is that there's no possible way of being successful if people don't know who you are or what you've done because very few people buy art. And so you have to communicate with a lot of people before you'll get any interest that could be turned into revenue, and so you have to communicate. And obviously, you have to communicate because you have to have a market. And it's just as important to know how to communicate, or perhaps even more important, than it is to know how to produce things that are beautiful and of value. And if you think about it as communication, it's less off-putting than if you think about it as selling yourself.

It’s still a tremendous problem; I mean no matter what you produce, regardless of its value, a huge part of the problem you'll face trying to monetize it is communicating its existence. And so artists are rarely—not only rarely trained in doing that, but are also frequently somewhat temperamentally disinclined to do it.

Absolutely.

So that's a warning to all of you out there who are artistically inclined: if you want to make a living, especially independently, you had better be prepared to learn how to communicate it with everything at your disposal and put as much effort into that, if you can, as into your art itself. That's... that again, that's not necessary if all you want to do is produce art, but if you want to produce art and live, it's necessary.

I've listened to your lectures.

Yes.

Yeah. Well, it’s hard-won knowledge. I've produced items for sale, you know, prior to my books, say, and I thought they were quite useful, these programs I've developed with my colleagues to help people write a life plan that's self-authoring and to assess their personality. But it wasn't until I was able to communicate with a very large number of people that those products became remotely successful, despite their quality, let's say.

Yeah, yeah.

So can I ask you, just out of curiosity—as don't feel inclined to answer this—how many of your paintings have you sold?

One, three.

Three?

Yeah, that was three. I was commissioned to do two, and does Agora Gallery still represent you? Do you have galleries that represent you?

No, no, absolutely not.

For one month only?

Only for one month. That was the show.

Yeah, and people can contact you through your website?

Yes, every piece of information about me is on my website.

Are the prices of your artworks on your website?

Nope.

Why not?

I'm not saying they should be; I'm just curious.

I just think they shouldn't. I think I should communicate with people first.

That's part of communication.

I don't have a set price; it depends.

Alright, so let's talk about this contest. And so why don't you tell me the story? Because I don't know the story, and so I'd really like to hear it.

Yeah, I don't know the story on your end. I didn't just know the story on my end; I have no idea why I was chosen. I never asked this question; I never wanted to know. Today, I'll ask you.

It's chosen because, in my opinion, and also the opinion of the people I had helping me make the decisions, your drawings were—they were clearly the best of all the drawings that we had, all the pieces of art.

They're not exactly drawings; you can describe more what they are?

They were better than any of the others that we received, and I would say markedly so. So that's the simple explanation. We felt very fortunate that the contest had produced such a positive result.

So with lockdown and with my state of health, it was quite difficult to find another illustrator, to even know how to go about that. So the contest came up as an idea, and I don't know—

Not a bad idea!

Well, we'll see, won't we? But I'm very pleased with the way that it's turned out.

So, okay, so how did you... do you remember how you found out about the contest?

I remember everything. Yes, I had a friend, Lawrence Fox. He lives in the UK. He's an actor and musician, and right now, he organizes parties. He's in politics now, so he sent me the link of your Twitter. I was in the evening, and I was sitting with my husband, drinking tea in the kitchen. I was sitting like that, and I never sit like that, and I was ready to rip up my hair because I really wanted it. I told him, "There is no way I can't make lined art." He said, "Do your thing." I said, "No, you don't understand. It's Jordan Peterson. He knows exactly what he wants when he says line art. It has to be produced in lines, and I just can't do that."

You have to do your thing. Just do your thing.

Some people just don't know until they see it.

So my teacup was standing on those... can you see?

Yes, put a little closer.

Yes, these are German drawings, and my mom bought them in Hamburg. I was looking in the sky and I was looking at the lights, and I said, "This is my thing." He said, "Do it, go right now."

So you saw the contest announcement on Twitter?

Yeah, see, I don't even remember how we announced it, but obviously, we used Twitter. I kept the screenshot; I don't remember much of this at all.

Yeah, and I remember why I wanted it so bad. I wanted it because I wanted to make you smile. I wanted...

Now, why did you care about that?

So, first of all, did you know about me, yes, before that?

How?

I knew about you for a long time, but I never followed you because I'm not following everybody; it's just a habit.

So how did you know? How did you come across my work?

Lawrence Fox; he sent me the link on the same day. And that day I was thinking, why—but you're so... sorry, sorry to interrupt you. But you said that you—when he sent you the link, did you already know about my work?

Yes, you did.

How did you? So what—

What? The videos? Or had you read my previous book, lectures?

No, lectures. I was listening to your art lectures.

I see. Okay. You're listening to my lectures on art.

Oh, yeah. You gave a lecture in Toronto Museum, I think.

Yes, that's the one.

I love. I've listened to it three times, I think.

I think that was in Ottawa at the National Gallery, and I did one at the National Gallery, and I did one on the meaning of music at a museum in Toronto, but that's not the one you're referring to.

No, I wish I could find it. I need to find it. I need the links as well.

So I went ahead; I went downstairs, and I knew I can't do that in drawings, so what I did... at the time, I would do photo montages, black and white photo montages. Meaning, I would make a list of keywords, something I need for that, and I knew I need the sky. I knew I need a guy and a special character—not just any guy. I wanted him to be proud and what's the word? A slightly arrogant.

This was the first rule, the first goal: do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement.

And I sent out suggestions, right? The suggestion was the tarot card.

Yeah, you sent one tarot card from the Rider deck, I believe it was the Rider deck.

So, I would create that, and then I would just start searching the web, and that could be a photo; that could be part of the painting. I would just collect in a very chaotic way, very neurotic and chaotic for three to four hours. I’d just pick up the stuff—everything I see, everything I see useful, everything I see fit, I would collect.

Then I see a plain page; that is scary. And I knew that I'm gonna sit 12—not one. Usually, I see one; I would have to deal with 12. And I knew I can do it, but usually, I'll drop myself into the world. I'll just drop myself into something impossible and see if I can survive. That's what I do.

So I photo montage—this out of pieces, just like the mosaic. That's why I spoke of making a mosaic from the center out. I would find the heart of the image and I'd work towards the edges. Then I'll have to flawlessly integrate them into each other. There are probably hundreds; yeah, there are a hundred pieces here from all sorts of sources.

And why did you decide to use a photo montage rather than draw my thing?

It's my thing. He told me just do your thing.

That I see.

Okay, so show, bring the image up again. Let me make some comments about it, and I can tell you—

Okay, so I like the melody of the main figure. There's something musical about it, and about the way that— I guess it's the lines of the standing figure and the dog and the butterfly. It fits harmoniously together, and you got it right to have him looking up into the sky like he's preoccupied, and even though he's hypothetically about to step off this cliff, the way that you produce this is similar to the way that I write because I collect all sorts of things, and then I array them, and then I edit them, and edit them, and edit them, and edit them until I'm done.

So when I saw this, the first thing I believe I thought was that it was beautiful. And that was a necessary criteria for my satisfaction. And there's nothing about your drawings that are foolish or trivial. And I like the classic element. And so when I saw this, I was very happy. I thought, "Well, that'll be a beautiful addition to the book."

So you sent The Fool?

You're speaking my language, first of all. Every word that's exactly how I feel. I had to create shape-wise something harmonious, perfectly harmonious. It has to be balanced out perfectly; otherwise, it's junk. And whenever—that's very difficult to do. You see people often, when they make a portrait, even very talented people can't array the multiple—if there are multiple figures, they can't array the multiple figures together so that they look either like they're dancing, let's say, like they're related to each other properly. They look like separate figures sort of stuck on a page.

And certainly, that isn't the case with your illustration of The Fool. And often people would ask me who I'm inspired by—no one. They would not believe me.

It's definitely look like that; oh, it's definitely look like Dore.

Well, it's definitely look like this guy, and the guy's definitely look like my brother. It's none of those things. I never get inspired by visuals; I get inspired by music.

So here we come a full circle because I always knew that I have to choose either music or drawings—two things, and I knew I have to choose because when you're little, grown-ups would say, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” which implies you have to choose. And I didn't want to choose.

Well, it's so interesting that you think of your drawings musically, given that that's how they struck me and that's how they struck you, the words—

So what I do is I put my music, and I work only to music, nothing else. I have no ideas, and I'm trying to turn my head off. I'm not thinking during this chaotic picking; I have to analyze: like good, bad, bad, bad, right?

But then, when it's all done, it's pretty much like what actors do: master actors with method acting. They just collected all this information. Yeah, they know everything about— they dressed up, and they just being. And I can't control this. When I attach those things, I'm just—the tool. I can't think. Once I started thinking, I'm ruined.

Right. Well, yeah, thinking is perhaps reserved for critical judgment rather than creative production. Yeah, you have to open yourself up to a kind of attention. And it's interesting that, you know, you say you collected a very large number of items to work with. It's initial overproduction, followed by selection. And that's another thing useful for people who are listening to this or watching it might want to know. Like when I write, I write way more than I keep. And then I can select, and so I don't constrain myself to begin with; I can write down whatever I want, knowing full well that I'm going to modify it or throw much of it away. So I sent—like I had images in mind, photographs, paintings that that captured the theme of what I wanted to portray in the illustration for the chapter. And so as we progressed through the 12, I had sent an image or two or three, perhaps. I don't exactly remember that sort of hinted at what I was looking for.

And so then you worked off that initial suggestion, but you produced something that was in that vein, but not by any means the same thing. So let's go through. Let's go—let's show everybody the illustrations one by one and talk about each of them. So we saw number one, The Fool.

Yeah, I had much more. Obviously, I had much more. I had mountains and extra stuff, and I always minimize it. Not necessary, out. I simplified it completely.

Then I went to number five, Rule Five.

That's Do Not Do What You Hate.

And so that's Lucifer plummeting from heaven.

Yeah, that's the one, and tell me about that.

That's my favorite rule.

That's your favorite rule? Is that you mean the favorite illustration or the rule itself?

Now you hadn't read the chapters, I don't believe?

I did.

You did? Okay, so I sent them to you?

Yes, okay, so that was wise, that was appropriate.

I asked for it, but then I stopped myself from reading on. Most of them, I didn't want—I didn't want to translate them into words and vice versa.

Okay, so, but you had read the chapter for Rule Five?

Yeah, you gave me very clear three paragraphs on each rule, and that was more than enough, and you showed pictures.

I have it here; we can attach it.

And we went back and forth on this image quite a lot.

On this one?

No, the only change here was that the hand was too long.

Right, arm length?

Well, that happens to stick in my mind, so that may not be an accurate representation of what happened.

So tell me about this image again; it has that lovely harmony. You know the character looks like he— the figure looks like he's dancing. It's beautiful.

Yeah, so I was inspired by a ballet dancer, and I didn't want it to look too much like this because they are similar in description, right? You want him to be all the way down on the ground. I wanted him to be in the middle, and it was very challenging, very challenging because the emotion is so contradictory to me. And I was trying to catch it in one frame, and the emotion was he's still falling; he's not there yet.

It's quite interesting—he's desperate and angry and hopeful. It's a great expression, and he's looking for help.

Yeah, well, and I believe you can see all of those things in the expression. There's a pleading in it.

Yeah, so once I get the face, I would change the face of a person obviously, unrecognizably for others, and I'll work on a nose, obviously, and I'll work on the eyes, and then I'll change the emotion. I'll actually work on the flaps of the skin to make him more desperate. The darker the area on top of his eye, the more desperate he is. There are ways to work on emotion to change it slightly, and I'm changing it only on one half of the face; that's my trick.

The other half of the face would describe a different motion, and so how did you discover that technique?

Okay, actually, there is a filmmaker, first filmmaker; his name is George Méliès. He was French. The one who created... moon—what was the name? I have it, write it down. He created... [Music] what's his name? We needed a trip to the moon.

Oh, yes, the very early filmmaker. He was the first, very famous film.

Yeah, so he has been depicted in Hugo Cabret by Martin Scorsese's film, right?

Yeah, so there I saw how he created the magic. He wanted some... a man disappeared, so he would take the canister of the film, take the actual film, get to that point, cut out a few frames where the person disappears, and glue it together. So there I noticed the same idea in music when I'm listening, let's say, to Sting. He will do exactly the same thing. He will take the emotion that comes to the point of... I forgot the word—the musical term. He will cut the other half, he'll take a different emotion, cut over the beginning, glue them together, and that creates a completely different emotion in music.

Nobody's using it unless you're a genius, and why—the reason is because the church would forbid it in the very early stages because those chords would create doubt, doubt and uncertainty. So those chords sound beautiful and slightly bitter and sophisticated. You'll never hear it in music, especially classical music.

So I've started to think how can I recreate it visually? Same thing.

So you showed Rule 11, so let's jump to that one. Unless you have a preference, that's Do Not Allow Yourself to Become Resentful, Deceitful, or Arrogant, and that's Satan in hell. And that's modeled after an illustration from Paradise Lost by Gustave Doré, if I remember correctly.

So why don't you tell me about that illustration again?

There is not much to tell. I was trying to recreate one of those, and I was trying to be simplistic about it, obviously, showing a big distress, devastation. That's how I show devastation.

Yes, and that's devastation wrought by becoming resentful, deceitful, and arrogant.

So, and the point of the chapter, at least in part, is that even if you have reasons for all of those three things, especially resentment, because people often have extraordinarily difficult lives, going down that path is likely to make everything worse. And that's a non-trivial problem because if you're suffering dreadfully, then it's very difficult to resist the temptation of resentment.

So it's something I've certainly struggled with, that rule, and Rule 12: Be Grateful in Spite of Your Suffering. Those are rules that I've had a very hard time abiding by.

What's that? That took me the longest, this rule. I've created three or four different versions, and I worked and worked and worked, and I was not satisfied.

Yes, this—

Yeah, alright, let's go to Rule... do you have an order you prefer?

Sure, we go to Rule Two.

Rule Two, okay, rules—so I've done the last, the best for last: Imagine Who You Could Be and Then Aim Single-Mindedly at That. That was a tricky one to have you do because the chapter is an analysis of an old alchemical drawing, and so you had to be constrained in the recreation of that because it had to duplicate all the elements of the original drawing, or my chapter wouldn't have made any sense.

So, which made it easier for me? Being constrained is easy; I know exactly what's supposed to be there.

Yes, well, people with an artistic temperament, or maybe people with a wannabe artistic temperament, often rail against constraint. But it's... you want a lot of constraint, generally speaking, otherwise you drown in choice, and that’s a big problem.

So this chapter describes this picture as a story that proceeds from the bottom up. You can take it in at a glance, but it also proceeds from the bottom up, and it's the emergence of personality. A well-developed personality from nothing, in some sense, or from potential; that's another way of thinking about it. And it's an unbelievably sophisticated image, which is why it takes me a chapter to unwrap some of it.

So what was the experience for you of working on this image?

I figured I was looking for one of the paintings to make inverted as opposed to black figures on white background, which is usually the case. I've done it inverted, and I loved it. I loved how it's black as opposed to every original I saw on the internet. That makes it very magical. There are dragons there.

So the way the picture works, just as a hint, is that, well, the bottom sphere, in some sense, represents that which attracts your interest. And then that can transform itself into that which you're afraid of. So you might have an ambition, for example, to pursue something you're interested in, but then that turns into a dragon because you're afraid of pursuing it. But if you do confront it, then that turns into you. That helps you develop your personality. That's that image in a thumbnail. It’s much more to it than that, of course.

I love it.

Rule Four.

Oh, that's Rule... sorry, that was Rule Two. Yes, Imagine Who You Could Be, and Then Aim Single-Mindedly at That. This is Rule Three; it's Michaela's favor.

Do Not Hide Unwanted Things in the Fog.

Right, and this is the opposite of hiding unwanted things in the fog. This is confronting them, and that's a variant of Saint George and the dragon, which is an unbelievably pervasive mythological and artistic motif, and perhaps also the oldest story that we have. The oldest stories that we know are variants of King George and/or Saint George and the dragon.

So tell me about this one.

That was difficult because there were too many items that shouldn't look separated, although the woman should be separated. So what I've done is using a fabric of hers and a fabric of his flying into the same direction, and that's the connecting point. The castle should be separated, so I wasn't worried about the castle, but the dark sky and the dragon work in...
Sure—45 degrees, yeah, right. Absolutely.

So the mass of the dragon and the mass of the sky are balanced against the rider and that gives it a symmetry across from the top left corner to the bottom right corner.

Yeah, absolutely, draw a line there; it's symmetrical across that axis, and the castle had to be there, and the dragon had to be there, and the woman had to be there. All those elements are crucial, and so this is what you do when you don't hide things in the fog. You confront them, and you free something of value as a consequence. That's the most magnificent discoveries of human beings that human beings have ever made.

And images like this are an attempt to make that conscious, to serve to— they’re a guide to a particular kind of action in the world, that's the voluntary confrontation with things you don't understand and that you are afraid of, and the promise that something of extreme value will emerge as a consequence of that, even though it looks dire initially.

And can be—I mean this is no joke, because if you go off to fight dragons, there's always the possibility that you'll die or worse. And that's a real possibility; it's not something that can be hand-waved away with any amount of psychological nonsense, let's say. These are real battles, not merely psychological battles.

Rule Four, please stop me too if there's anything else you want to say about any of these images. I really want to hear what you have to say.

I really want to hear what you have to say.

Rule Four: Notice that Opportunity Lurks Where Responsibility Has Been Abdicated.

Atlas, and there's three women in the background. Why?

That was part of your suggestion, so I have to say why.

Well, I would say that to the degree that men are properly shouldering their load, then women can rejoice and play in the background, which is not to say that all women do is rejoice and play. No one lives like that, but it's very difficult to rejoice and play when responsibility remains unshouldered.

So, and it is the case that each of us lift the world up onto our shoulders in one way or another or fail to do so. It's a terrible burden, but it's a meaningful one.

Rule Five—we did Rule Five. Sorry, go ahead.

I've made it theatrical if you see on top—it’s like a part of the scene that makes sense more.

Yeah, this is part of the scene because you can see the fabric on top, right here. Like, and they're dancing in the background, so it's like a stage setting, something like that. That was my idea.

Yeah, well, what we play out on the stage are representations of things that we should play out in our life, or sometimes they're opposite. Because you know, if you see a villain on the stage and he ends badly, then the lesson is to not be a villain. But that's still imitation; it's just imitation of the reverse.

Rule Six—because we did Rule Five, Abandon Ideology. Abandon Ideology and that's your version of a Soviet-era propaganda poster?

Yep.

Now you must have seen many of those when you were in Riga?

No, I haven't seen any of those because I was born in 1977.

My mistake. So tell us about this image.

Not much to tell; I wanted her to look mean, cruel, bitter, just like the women I saw in Riga, 1977. The women looked like that.

Why? Why they would be there...

I guess we're thinking that it had something to do with ideology and its terrible grip—the terrible grip that ideology had on, well certainly the people in the Soviet Union, but also in the entire world was unbelievably catastrophic—a whole century of catastrophe for hundreds of millions of people, and we still haven't learned our lesson. And people can object that you can't help but think ideologically, and I don't believe that to be the case.

No, I'm the product of that, and I can tell you that for me it's a given that things can change within one night. It's a given because it happened. People in America cannot imagine such a thing because things gradually went better and better, and slightly better, maybe a bit worse but better and better. You cannot imagine, because they never lived it, and things were taken away one night. Everything changed.

Well, people got a bit of a taste of that this year, I would say.

Even so, and hopefully, it won't go beyond the taste that we've had.

So I guess you follow an ideology when you have the overweening desire to explain more of the world than you can explain. It's very complicated. Your representation of the world becomes something you proudly display to indicate your moral superiority, and you'll sacrifice people to that.

Rule Seven: Work as Hard as You Possibly Can on At Least One Thing and See What Happens.

I love this—this is beautiful. It's so playful. It's got this feeling of a child's fairy tale, but one that's not speaking down to children, and there's real love in it. And it's very frequently the case that mentoring relationships, apprenticeship relationships have that love in them.

This shoemaker is teaching this young boy a craft that will enable him to do something productive, but also enable him to live—to provide him with a living—and he's off! He's the good father like Gepetto. He's obviously pleased that his apprentice is showing mastery, and that's the definition of a good father perhaps, a good parent—that you're pleased when your son or your daughter advances, even when they advance beyond you, which hopefully they will if you're highly successful.

There's a lot of love in this illustration, as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, I've tried to appeal to you. If you look at the old guy, he's a young character.

I can't believe you haven't noticed the list of things that I haven't noticed would fill many, many books.

That's so smart. That's so smart! The lovely character, this guy, and the room that you've portrayed there is... it's a place of productive activity. It's inviting, and you made it theatrical again with the fabric along the top, and so it's like we're looking into a private moment.

Exactly.

The fact that it's theatrical...

So tell me—so this is... you've done this with a number of images. What possessed you to do that?

My experience!

My own experience, I suppose. I've had that with my grandmother.

Why make it theatrical?

Yes. And so overtly, it's perfectly appropriate, especially given the tenor of the book.

I'm not sure, again—I'm not sure about most of my decisions; I wouldn't—

Yes, well, that's the problem. If artists can say what they do, they wouldn't need to do their art, I suppose. I don't know; that's left to other people often, and some of the worst claptrap ever produced is analysis of art, often by the artists themselves but often by critics as well.

Well, you open up the curtains on a scene, and to open up the curtains on a scene is to indicate that this scene is of importance because otherwise, why put it on the stage? Why open the curtains? Why say that this is here for your consideration?

And so you're displaying to the viewer something of crucial importance: here is that this relationship exists and it's healthy and positive.

Yeah, and something very... yes, and it's intimate as well.

Yes, exactly! Yes!

Lovely—beautiful favorite, yes.

And you managed to imbue this illustration with sentiment without it being maudlin or naive or saccharine or sugar-coated, any of that.

And that's a very tricky thing to do—to make something positive and joyful and loving like that without it degenerating into sentimentality.

Yeah!

With the boy, I was struggling because many boys have increased emotions; they're very emotional. And I needed to show a sense of—oh! But every boy I tried, I probably tried 20—didn't work until I found this picture of my son ten years ago. He was making bubbles—soap bubbles—in the original picture, and he looked at them without overly expressing his joy.

And that's the moment I like; it's something in between, right?

So he's contemplating.

Yes, happily. He's not sure if it's good or not, but the father approves.

Great. Rule Eight is irises.

Try to make one room in your house, in your home, as beautiful as possible.

I tried that multiple times, and it was extraordinarily useful to try to make a room beautiful or more than one room. It's such a good exercise to learn to cultivate a relationship with beauty. In a world where so much is ugly, beauty is as sustaining as bread, perhaps even more so.

And so this is a testament, let's say, to Vincent Van Gogh's Irises, which at one point was a painting that sold for more than any other painting that had ever sold for, 170-odd million dollars, if I remember correctly. I'm sure that record's been broken since then, but it's of great interest to note that the most expensive artifacts in the world are artistic artifacts and in principle, those that speak remind us of beauty.

And the chapter Rule Seven—Rule Eight, Try to Make One Room in Your Home as Beautiful as Possible—is a meditation on the ability of art to remind us of what we've forgotten.

So tell me about the choices you made in this image.

So the original irises—the jug is very tiny and very much looks like his face with an ear; the original jug. And I couldn't use that, so I needed a different jug and I needed it to be rural, nothing more. I needed it in the wood, the place.

And I needed more than that. I was looking at those, and I was not sure this is Irises by Van Gogh until I found a way to make it his with the portrait on the background.

That is clear. And also, it's slightly off-centered and slightly looks like a mistake, but thanks for his face, it's perfectly harmonious within the page.

You see that it's slightly off, but it's not.

So that's part of what makes a piece of visual art work is the relationship between the images and their hypothetical mass. It's something like that. They have to be balanced properly on the page, absolutely.

So you picked—you talked about the rural nature of the jug and the plain wood table that it's sitting on. That's to not take away from the flowers.

Well, every artist directs the attention of his or her viewer. Now the attention is on Irises.

So you make decisions, often—this is one of the reasons I believe that hand-drawn animated art is preferable to computer-generated animated art. Often computer animation allows animators to render their images with incredible complexity and detail, but it's easy for the viewer to get lost as a consequence, whereas a movie like Sleeping Beauty, you know exactly where to look because everything that isn't relevant is faded out to some degree, and that which is relevant is high resolution.

And so the artist is helping the viewer view the image by making decisions about what is highlighted and what isn't, and that's part of how the artist allows the image to tell a story because the artist can guide the attention of the viewer by making careful choices about what's foreground and what's background.

Yeah, and that reminds me of my thinking that nowadays graphics are too sharp. They’re too chewed on properly; all you have to do is swallow. It’s just there for you completely; everything is in focus; everything—every single detail is very saturated.

There's no mystery, and it's not how my eyes see. Maybe it's the poor vision?

Maybe no, it's not how anybody's eye sees.

It’s not how I see, and I need it to be realistic. I mean the way we see is when we look at something straight on, what we're directly looking at is in high resolution, but as we move beyond the center of our vision to the periphery, everything becomes much less high resolution, and that's because while we have limited visual computational resources.

But we view what's most important in high detail, and late everything else goes, and that is obvious! Absolutely obvious!

But if you look at every single one of them, they're not in focus; they're not perfectly sharp, and that's on purpose.

And what do you think that does?

It gives them a dreamlike quality. That's one thing I noticed about...

Reminds us what we saw like 30, 40 years ago and forgot how beautiful it was.

Rule Nine, if old memories still upset you, write them down carefully and completely.

This, I believe, was Saint Anthony. There's a number of famous representations of Saint Anthony being tormented by demons. We're all tormented by the demons of our imagination, regrets, fears, paranoias, perhaps other people in our representations—and he's peaceful in this image despite this torment.

I thought this was an extremely effective image, Jordan. Look at the eyes; doesn't it remind you of anybody?

Who is it?

That's you!

I've noticed many times in your lectures, in your interviews, you're looking for answers. Look up, and look up exactly like that.

Now, I'd say that tormented, so I just wanted to be relatable.

Well, I guess you need to look up to find what it is that makes the torment worthwhile, and you're fortunate if you find that.

Rule Ten, that was the one where we have to make some construction work on his feet. Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship.

Yes, and you're very fortunate if you can do that, that's for sure.

Another dance.

And this was—do you remember the image I sent you?

Do you remember the artist?

Was it...? I can't remember, unfortunately—on The Kiss.

Yeah, I can check it out right now.

Was it also Gustave Doré?

It was inspired by Aubrey Beardsley.

Aubrey Beardsley, yes!

That was my only reference, just one picture.

So the fact when you see a couple moving harmoniously together, and they seem to belong together, the reason they seem to belong together is because they're mimicking each other in their posture.

And that doesn't mean that they're necessarily doing exactly the same thing, but the manner in which one person holds their body is related to the manner in which the other person is holding their body. And you see this with mothers and children. So, if you take videos of mothers who are in a good mental state with their infants and you speed them up videoing the mother and the infant, you see that they're engaged in a continual dance of reaction and response.

But if you do that with depressed mothers, then you don't get the same rhythm and harmony in the interactions, and that's because the relationship is disrupted by the depression.

So in this representation, these two are very harmoniously linked together, and they're maintaining the romance in their relationship.

And the chapter is a discussion of the multitude of problems that have to be solved in a relationship for that romance to be maintained across time. It's as if romance—if you think about it, you might think about it as a form of play.

And play is very easily disrupted among children. If children are in any powerful emotional state, that will interfere with their play. All their needs, in some sense, have to be taken care of before play will emerge.

And there's some... that also seems to be the case to some large degree with regard to the relationship between men and women or between two intimate partners. There's many things that have to be solved properly for the romance to be maintained across time.

And Rule 12: Be Grateful in Spite of Your Suffering. Another Saint—images that have become much rarer in the modern world.

So tell me about this image.

Well, again, not overly expressive—a peaceful; he looks like he's part of the tree.

Yep, again, not everything in focus. Again, it's a tree that doesn't exactly look like a tree, and you can't see the bottom of the tree, which often happens in real life.

You don't see every single branch of the tree when you're looking on the man.

And so why did I—did I hadn't noticed that before? Do you know why you decided to make the bottom of the tree obscured?

It wasn't a conscious decision.

Well, so then what it looks like is that his legs now become the trunk of the tree.

Huh, oh, I see that.

And they mirror the branches, the major branches in the tree, exactly!

So you're indicating that that's a really good example of how the visual imagination can supersede the conscious knowledge. Of course, you don't know why you made all the decisions you made in these images. How in the world could you possibly know?

And the image should contain way more than you think. I mean, if you diligently worked at it, and you know, if you had planned a drawing, that said, "Well, I'm going to give a man the strength of a tree."

It's doubtful that you could have consciously come up with a solution that would be better than the one that you picked as a consequence of your aesthetic judgment.

Yes.

So he's rooted powerfully. I mean, what you have there is that what's rooted powerfully in the earth is his feet, and his legs, and you've indicated that that's a more powerful rooting, a more significant rooting than the rooting of the tree itself.

There's a bird in the background.

Yeah, you’ve noticed, and that made you laugh! I'm happy you noticed.

Why?

Because that was intentional.

Bird is a freedom.

Alright, so I'm going to close this up, but I have, but I want to ask you something else, which is, I suppose, the question I wanted answered more than any other question that I could put to you. What has been the consequence for you of having undertaken this job? What's happened?

I mean partly as a consequence of making the images, but you've had some attention directed your way now because of the book, and there’s going to be a lot more coming because of this video and because the book will be out March 2nd. What’s changed for you?

Nothing yet. Nothing changed yet. I don't know what's gonna come; maybe you do!

No, I don't. I have no idea if and what. But I've accomplished what I wanted, and what I wanted is to make you smile during the period of difficulty, and Michaela tipped me off every time you saw an art. She would tell me, "Dad said, 'Oh my God.'" And that would make my day.

Well, I appreciate that very much, and I'm very happy to have the illustrations in my book. Very surreal. I think they're a great addition to the book, and they're not yet... next week, I have pre-prints; I have the PDFs, and so I haven't seen how the images look in the final production yet.

I like the images in my first book. These are nicely different. They're more romantic; they're more fairy tale-like; they’re more elusive in some sense. I hope people like them a lot; I suspect that they will. I hope that the kind of attention that you want comes your way, the kind of attention that would be best for you comes your way as a consequence of doing this.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for all your work.

Absolutely!

Welcome. You helped us solve a very difficult problem at a very difficult time.

That was my intention; nothing else.

Well, it's lovely to meet you. I hope we get to do it in person.

We will.

And maybe we'll talk again publicly some months after the book is released, and we can discuss the consequences then.

That would be nice! Is there anything else that you'd like to say?

Just that I'm very happy to meet you. Nothing else. I’m just very happy to see you talking to me off the screen.

Well, it was good to get to know you, and thank you very much, and we'll make this enter into an interesting visual display as well as an interesting conversation.

Alright, thank you very much. [Music]