Item description
A one-page ink and watercolor comic titled “No one home”. The top half of the page is taken up by a comic book style woman in a blue dress gesturing and saying “Have you wondered why it's so hard to come up with ideas when you finally sit down and really try to draw something? Why your mind goes totally fucking blank right when you’ve carved out this precious time to “get creative” and really get to work on all this shit you’ve been trying to improve upon? You’ve been chugging along, all happy with your “progress”, when suddenly the empty chamber that is your mind reveals itself to have no windows or doors that might allow the seeds of creativity to float in and germinate into anything resembling a fucking clue about how to come up with a goddamn idea?? I mean, seriously, what the hell?”
Below that, on the left, the woman is staring blankly ahead. Her brain is painted brown and labeled “Empty space” with an arrow.
On the right, the woman is looking to the side, and her brown-painted brain is labeled “for rent” with an arrow.
Image | 2020
No One Home
R.C. Barajas
I admit to feeling a certain amount of guilt about how creatively productive I have been during this pandemic. Most certainly a defense mechanism or survival instinct or a desperate need of a shell into which I could shield my hermit crab self, I found the external restrictions permitted an internal freedom to explore.
There was not a moment in creating these things in which the pandemic did not factor. The mere fact that I had the time and drive to do them was in response to the pandemic, its horror for so many, its legacy. In looking back at this work, there will always be an asterisk in my mind regarding their genesis, their backstory.
