Space…

I drew this around seven or eight years ago.

I'd shown some of my illustrations to an editor friend who suggested I start a blog. If I was going to do that, I would need both a name and an image.

The name came easily. Our education system, which grades and assesses our children so rigorously, seemed to be receiving minus points when it came to understanding what many of those same children needed and were not receiving.

The image became the small school chair. For so many families, that chair is deeply poignant. It remains empty, or sits in the corridor while we, as parents and carers, occupy similar generic versions of it time and again, meeting professionals who ask the same questions over and over.

The same editor friend once commented on my work: “You leave a lot of space in your drawings.” I've thought about that ever since.

Many of the graphic novelists I admire devote enormous attention to background detail. In fact, another friend was completing a PhD that explored this very aspect of graphic novels. As a sensitive person, I worried that the sparseness of my work made it somehow lesser.

Over time, though, I realised that the space is essential.

To convey what I need to convey, there has to be immediacy. Although I can spend time drawing in detail, much of this work is almost somatic in its process. A memory surfaces, I feel the emotion attached to it, and as I draw, the words arrive too.

I have to work quickly or I risk losing the moment. Also in those early years, when I was caring full-time, there often wasn't much time before my attention was needed elsewhere.

I also understand something else about the space I leave. It creates a starkness. It says everything it needs to say when I draw a child hunched over alone, or wrapped tightly in a duvet. I want that image to land hard. I also want to give the reader room to think, to interpret, and to bring their own experience to what they see.

I don't believe there is one truth. There are many truths, because life is complex. I don't want to tell people what to think or do. As parents and carers, we've already had far too much of that.

What I want is to create space for reflection. Space for people to encounter their own thoughts and emotions.

If a drawing makes you feel sad, frustrated, or uncomfortable, then perhaps you're feeling something close to what I felt when I saw my child sitting alone in that corridor once again.

Do I offer solutions? No. While the system remains as it is, I don't believe there is a simple solution to offer.

But if you look at one of my drawings and feel moved, if you look at it and think, "That's not okay” then that is a beginning. Because empathy is often the first step towards change. Once we truly see that child, that family, and their experience, we may begin to view things differently. And from there, perhaps, change becomes possible.