WHY I LIKE KATIE RICE'S GIRL DRAWINGS

I don't know if I'm up to the task of explaining why I like Katie's drawings so much. After all she draws beautiful girls wearing girlie fashions and I'm a guy. Guy's aren't interested in fashion! But I am interested in ideas. I love it when someone with talent seduces me into liking something that I wouldn't ordinarily like. It may be something I don't want to like, like fashion, but these seducers invest their their world and their vision with so much magic that I'm drawn in against my will. Katie's one of those people.

Maybe it's because her girls are so doggone happy. Katie makes it seem like being a girl is fun and I guess we're all magnetically drawn to people who are having fun. Even more important, she knows how to draw fun. It's hard. I've tried. It's not enough to draw smiles on people. The quality of the line itself has to be fun. The lines have to playfull. The shapes have to be playfull. The reader has to believe the artist had fun drawing it.



On the other hand, the lines have to have confidence. Most people are intuitively repelled by lines that appear aimless and pointless. You have to know what you want and in a playfull way not know what you want at the same time. It's a tough balance to maintain. You can see why artists like Katie are so rare.


One of the things that makes fun so hard to draw is that the mediums we all work in are so resistant to that subject. All media express some things better than other things. Television seems to favor intimate, Jay Leno-type shows and film seems to favor car chases and broad action. In the same way pen drawings seem to favor the grotesque and pencil favors super-realistic drawings. Whenever you try to draw fun, like Katie does, you'll find the medium you're using attempting to pull you away to its own bias. Katie imposed her will on the medium and tamed it.

OK, I've been saying nice things about Katie and I feel it's my responsibility as an impartial observer to try to find a dark side. If there is a dark side in Katie's future it may come about because she's a thoughtfull person and may one day wake up thinking that she's lived her life wrong and that it's an artist's duty to portray famine and pestilence. It's the serious disease and it's ruined many an artist. She says this is impossible. I hope she's right.