Alison Garwood Jones

Technology makes promises so big it can scatter your focus, or make you freeze. Maybe you can relate.

When I’m feeling untethered by the too much-ness of AI, I always go back to mid-twentieth century illustration styles to reacquaint myself with my sense of wonder — everything from Andy Warhol’s 1950s cookbook drawings to Saul Bass’s film title sequences (One, Two, Three – 1961).

Two drawings from Wild Raspberries (1959) by Andy Warhol (The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts)

Up in the Kawartha Lakes district, I’m finding stacks of early 1960s (aply named) Wonder Books for kids in the antique shops along the main streets of all the little towns. These books sat on the shelves of family cottages for half a century until it was time to clean them out. I’ve decided to build a collection.

The quality I love most about the style of mid-century drawings is limitation.

Sixty years ago, four-colour CMYK printing was expensive and more labour intensive than spot colour illustrations where you have one layer for black outlines and another for a single splash of colour, usually red.

From these constraints burst forth a style full of bold energy,

and such charm.

These artists and this time period are inspiring me to set deliberate constraints on my artistic experiments. I keep asking, how can I limit my tools to increase the boldness of my expression?

For e.g. If I can only use two tools from my studio or my travel pack, which ones would I pick?  Maybe it’s a Japanese brush pen and a tube of ultramarine gouache? Or a 3B pencil, an eraser and the end of my finger (does that count as three?)

If art is not your jam, who can you go back to to remind yourself that less is more? It could be a favourite poet, chef, mathematician, systems theorist or strategist. Sit quietly with the simplicity of their creations.

Sometimes excellence is waiting for you to find two sticks and the patience and discipline to create that first spark.

Going back to the basics is the best way I’ve found to recharge my creativity and problem-solving abilities in an age where technological sophistication is on steroids.