Okay, tumblr swap post 3! This time I am going to talk about Andrew White’s themes! Woo woo! For this one I am going to talk about Pawn, which while a little bit more understated in it’s exploration, it also attacks it in a straightforward way.
In his pieces he seems to have an interest in characters with mysterious obsessions, and to play with the theme of the power our relationships can have over us. We see the strange project happening in the woods near the underpass, and we see that the main character is roped into it by the bond between them.
White’s play with sequencing of events is actually less present here than in other comics, but at the same time it is the central theme of the piece. In Pawn, the main character is the one who experiences time in the way that the audience experiences time in White’s other works. In this way, the piece becomes more about the emotional reality of recollection juxtaposed against present reality, rather than a plot puzzle to solve (like some non-sequential stories can become).
So my basic question is: why? Why does all of this reoccur and what meaning is White attempting to glean from it? If I were to attempt to tie them all together, I would guess that they are about value. About how if we look at meaning, if we investigate it, we lose sight of it. It exists in the abstract. In the connections we draw between moments, between people. And then, White extends in his stories about mysterious obsessions, between us and abstracted meaning itself.
The main character takes solace in being of a world of “air and soil” rather than “grids and numbers”. But we see that same character lost in a confused and ambiguous existence, while the world of “grids and numbers” seems to mean absolute clarity of awareness and purpose. One could say that this character finds value in ignorance, but I’d argue that he(?) finds value in the instinctual self. In the parts of self that just grasp the nature and value of things. That trying to understand and control our lives rigorously can sever our connection with this instinctual self, and with it, a sort of meaning and value too.
(Also this one is really pretty. Love the double layer thing.)