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Try Not to Get Too Attached
Using line drawings, colour and text, Robin Richardson transposes the sensibility of poetry into illustrated works, creating bite-sized, artistic meditations on the terribly wonderful, malleable and absurd experience of being alive. Richardson's intuitive works--inspired by medieval illuminated manuscripts--are drawn from fleeting, conscious contact with various notions and emotions; they feel their way around meaning and what it is to be human.
It's here, amongst animal imagery and Jungian psychological concepts, that the viewer can, if not careful, become lost in a collection of unsettling yet playful art: themes of loss, fear and euphoria are materially manifested through felt pen and pencil crayon. Within these works of art are scraps of consciousness, demons brought into the light of day and shared as if to say, clearly: you are not alone.
Praise for Try Not to Get Too Attached
"Try Not to Get Too Attached is an incredibly haunting self-portrait, the visual record of one artist's journey into the psyche's frayed and messy reaches, where "everything is so vivid," as she puts it. I keep originals of Robin Richardson's art on my walls to remind me of that vividness every day, whether it comes in the form of beauty or terror or something else altogether." --Alessandro Porco
It's here, amongst animal imagery and Jungian psychological concepts, that the viewer can, if not careful, become lost in a collection of unsettling yet playful art: themes of loss, fear and euphoria are materially manifested through felt pen and pencil crayon. Within these works of art are scraps of consciousness, demons brought into the light of day and shared as if to say, clearly: you are not alone.
Praise for Try Not to Get Too Attached
"Try Not to Get Too Attached is an incredibly haunting self-portrait, the visual record of one artist's journey into the psyche's frayed and messy reaches, where "everything is so vivid," as she puts it. I keep originals of Robin Richardson's art on my walls to remind me of that vividness every day, whether it comes in the form of beauty or terror or something else altogether." --Alessandro Porco
- GenresPoetry
120 pages, Paperback
Published November 5, 2019
14 people want to read
About the author
Robin Richardson
5 books30 followersRobin Richardson is an award-winning author and public speaker, teaching the art of deliberate creation.
She is a McDowell, Doris McCarthy, and Berton House Fellow and is the recipient of the Trillium Book Award among others. She is a graduate with honours from Sarah Lawrence College Master's in Writing Program.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 24, 2020
47. Try not to get too attached by Robin Richardson
Strange little drawings interspersed with text that could be described as prose poems. One drawing is labelled “Addicted to Discomfort,” and I felt it should be illustrated by stilettos. I found some of her animals disturbing and some of her poems, which were wondrous run on sentences were adult oriented.”The happy ending walks into a bar,” is my favorite line from the text poems. I think I want to read Richardson’s award winning poetry without the distraction of the drawings.
Strange little drawings interspersed with text that could be described as prose poems. One drawing is labelled “Addicted to Discomfort,” and I felt it should be illustrated by stilettos. I found some of her animals disturbing and some of her poems, which were wondrous run on sentences were adult oriented.”The happy ending walks into a bar,” is my favorite line from the text poems. I think I want to read Richardson’s award winning poetry without the distraction of the drawings.
August 18, 2020
For me this book exists at the intersection of (A) Jung’s Red Book, (B) the Aurora Consurgens, and (C) Flavia de Luce, if she was born in the 15th century and if she existed prior to her creation by the author Alan Bradley.
(C) First, I love Bradley’s Flavia series. If you don’t know (surely not!) Flavia is a chemical genius with a passion for danger, fun and poisons. Let that tell you I really like Richardson’s subjective placement in both the drawings and the words.
(B) The Aurora Consurgens (Dawn, or daybreak rising) is an alchemical text that “discusses” via text and image procreation. There’s an Oroboros in both texts for example, and in Richardson’s a few images later a bit of text that says “may your wounds be fertile.”
(A) So of course, this reads as a Jungian “lets come together” if you imagine one aspect of self speaking to another. Hieros gamos of the splintered soul.
Then there’s the fact that Richardson may be an alchemist of sorts, but she’s a 21st century one and so Cthulhu is unavoidable in the octopus, or devil fish. There’s the pen nib as ornament and the mention of Picasso, the spell for production, the ground steel knife, the mandrake root, the charm to conquer trauma and the bonsai tree and all the Eastern allusions that brings. Here’s a magical rendering for the recently multi-cultural.
That last bit would do me in, except for the clandestine intrusions of the Flavia-soul. By that I mean the subtle mind of someone who lives in noir-land and who promises to rise to outstanding complexity by harrowing the field of 10,000 life forms until it offers a manageable crop.
As a consequence, I’ll go get “Sit How You Want” (published in 2018) and read that. There’s probably going to be more of that confused but sensual multi-culturalism and sacred marriage stuff, but I’ll deal.
(C) First, I love Bradley’s Flavia series. If you don’t know (surely not!) Flavia is a chemical genius with a passion for danger, fun and poisons. Let that tell you I really like Richardson’s subjective placement in both the drawings and the words.
(B) The Aurora Consurgens (Dawn, or daybreak rising) is an alchemical text that “discusses” via text and image procreation. There’s an Oroboros in both texts for example, and in Richardson’s a few images later a bit of text that says “may your wounds be fertile.”
(A) So of course, this reads as a Jungian “lets come together” if you imagine one aspect of self speaking to another. Hieros gamos of the splintered soul.
Then there’s the fact that Richardson may be an alchemist of sorts, but she’s a 21st century one and so Cthulhu is unavoidable in the octopus, or devil fish. There’s the pen nib as ornament and the mention of Picasso, the spell for production, the ground steel knife, the mandrake root, the charm to conquer trauma and the bonsai tree and all the Eastern allusions that brings. Here’s a magical rendering for the recently multi-cultural.
That last bit would do me in, except for the clandestine intrusions of the Flavia-soul. By that I mean the subtle mind of someone who lives in noir-land and who promises to rise to outstanding complexity by harrowing the field of 10,000 life forms until it offers a manageable crop.
As a consequence, I’ll go get “Sit How You Want” (published in 2018) and read that. There’s probably going to be more of that confused but sensual multi-culturalism and sacred marriage stuff, but I’ll deal.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews