Escape into Life: Issue no. 18

Julie Heffernan, Self-portrait Sitting on a World

We have an outstanding line-up of art essays, poetry, and reviews this issue. Personally, I am grateful for the contributors to this online art journal. Month after month, we receive erudite, well-researched submissions on interesting topics, and it's my pleasure to present them to readers.

"No symbols where none intended": Samuel Beckett's Doodles . . . Bill Prosser has recently completed a three-year research project into Samuel Beckett’s doodles at the University of Oxford. Here is a brilliant condensation of his work.

The Prose-poetry of Nin Andrews . . . The writing of Nin Andrews doesn't fit into any easy categories, but it's effect is undeniable. She writes a lot about sex and orgasms. I think you'll like her work.

Julie Heffernan's Constructions of Self . . . Julie Heffernan is currently the most popular artist on Escape into Life, receiving over 100,000 visitors on a single page. I recently asked Linnea West to explore the symbolism in Heffernan's paintings, and she offered in return one of the most fascinating art reviews I've ever read.

The Spaces in Between . . . Lara Cory, a regular contributor to Escape into Life, always selects the most rich, interesting subject-matter. Here she examines the work of three printmaking artists, Frans Masereel, Dan Rickwood, and Leon Sidwell, and their capacity to use "crude imagery to express sophisticated themes."

What is Escape into Life?

Escape into Life hosts over 900 contemporary artist profiles, and is also an online arts journal with contributions from nearly 25 different writers. Many of our contributors—ranging from well-known published authors, university professors, and freelance journalists—continue to publish art reviews and art history essays month after month. In addition, our poetry editor selects a new poet to feature in the journal every issue.

The Escape into Life digest comes out about twice monthly and you can subscribe at the top of the website, next to the search bar.

As an organization, we seek to promote the arts in all its forms. Our next milestone is to merge the thriving online publication with a viable online art store.

Lee Li Xian

Self-taught illustrator from Singapore who studied Apparel Design and Merchandising at Temasek Polytechnic. Her works are incredibly original.

On Behance, a creative portfolio network, Xian's collections are arranged by thematic title, such as “My Machine Pal” (sample above) and “Color me and tell me I’m Colorful”. These unassuming works have a striking originality. Evocative of children’s book art, and done mainly in watercolors, there is a subdued, non-aggressive quality to the illustrations, but the themes are often complex and thought-provoking.

Right now I’m looking at “My Machine Pal” and Xian's art has so many connotations with our modern age of technology and gadgets. It doesn't take a leap of the imagination to realize that many of us are “closest friends” with our machines. Take away my cellphone or MacBook and watch all hell break loose. I'm emotionally connected to my machines. Xian's work captures this reality so well--and it is her unfeigned, guileless style which makes me smile at my own absurd behaviors. Her work brings me closer to myself and my own reflections. It is not an overt conceptual statement; it is merely suggestive and light-hearted, though pointing to a deeper truth.



In the collection "Color me and tell me I'm Colorful," Xian goes further with coupling an adult motif and a guileless, childlike style. The grotesque and bizarre enter the picture. A creepy, big-bellied man with one black pupil and one blue looks up at us. Presumably dancing a jig, he bounces (the curlicues are shown) on wooden shoes as if on a pogo-stick. His ragged mustache, hanging down like seaweed, adds to the overall creepiness of this watercolored leprechaun. What a wonderful sense of style Xian has--to put a tightly-wrapped argyle shirt and knickers on him!

He may be winking at us or he may be leering upwards. This half-menacing, half-sweet depiction frightens while at the same time evokes a latent sympathy for the character. The rest of the illustrations in the collection seem to depict lonely characters, either monstrous-looking, crying in panic, or staring into the back of a mirror and appearing in the opposite end.

I love the white space around the illustrations. The watercolors are brought out by that white space, and the overall effect is one of incomplete beauty. Like a child's notebook where each page has one sparse drawing on it, Xian's art mingles innocence and emptiness while conveying an original intelligence.

LEE LI XIAN'S WORK

This post is the second in a series of illustration art reviews. This month Escape into Life, Arts and Culture webzine, will become a permanent hub for illustration art reviews. If you would like to write reviews for us, please contact me.