My Why (Patreon)

I'm not that deep as an artist. I've always liked commercial art and children's programming, I love things meant for mass consumption and designed for regular people. I like screenprinting and linoleum printing, I like gig posters, I love zines, I like cartoons and visual novels and stationery. My Why doesn't feel like it should be super deep- I like cute things and pretty things and emotional things, and I like to share those things with others. I was misunderstood a lot as a kid (and still sometimes as an adult), and I find that sometimes art is the best way to convey an emotion or a moment.

I make art to show people things.

I'm from a state that is fundamentally misunderstood. There is an assumption that Louisiana is boring- that no one wants to read about Louisiana, yet our tourism industry is booming. There's an assumption that we're boring, but a party place, an assumption that New Orleans struggled with in the aftermath of Katrina, as fellow Americans justified why the people of New Orleans deserved the deluge of floodwaters because we're all sinners here. I've had publishers pass on Louisiana projects- memoirs, cookbooks- because they assumed no one wants to read about Louisiana.

I wanted to prove them wrong while staying true to my roots.

I doubled down.

I paint Louisiana things because many of them are disappearing. Whether we're losing land to saltwater intrusion from the Gulf or culture as heavy industry takes over small towns like my own, wildlife to all of the above, or our own history as it's erased and mistaught, I draw and paint these things to preserve them. It started with writing what I know- small town Louisiana life, long, hot, lazy summers, nothing to do and nowhere to go, so you watch the bugs in the grass- to a desperate artist's fight to get people to notice things and to care. These are things I care about, and I want others to care too.

Louisiana is just about last in the nation in EVERYTHING, and years of political mistakes, corruption, mishandling, mistreatment, and downright racism are to blame. I would love to encourage all of yall to visit this state- but now is not the time. I would love to invite yall down and show yall all these things- the sugarcane fields, the cypress knees, the swamps at sunset- but I don't want to encourage Louisiana politicians through additional tourism. It hurts me that I can't invite yall over, but it's sorta like my childhood home.

My father had a serious issue with alcoholism for all of my childhood, and I was hesitant to invite friends over because I never knew if it'd be a good night or a fight night. Louisiana has that vibe to me now. On the upside, my father sobered up and became a wonderful and loving person in his final year, so I have hope that Louisiana can turn herself around. The people here are good people. The culture, when not squashed, is a fun culture. We have a lot to love about ourselves, if we can just stop being treated like trash and treating ourselves and each other like trash.

When things start to turn around though, I'd love if yall came to visit. Come to see New Orleans. Come to visit Lafayette. Come to visit Houma. I'll take you on a swamp tour in an airboat, and we'll eat beignets and sip on snoballs, and I'll show you all the lovely botanical gardens and fun artist shops. If you don't know how, I'll teach you how to pick crabs and peel crawfish and show you how to make a roux. But Louisiana Renee has some housework to do first before I say yall should come over.

Louisiana is an inspiring place. My mother's family has been here since 1720- her maiden name is the first name I could trace back that far, so she still carries that with her. We have French and German in us, making us truly Creole. My mom always told me, repeatedly through the years, that we aren't Cajun, and that's an important distinction to make, as all we were taught about Louisiana history was American History (the Louisiana purchase) and Cajun History (and even that was spotty). What I've learned since then I've had to learn through reading and researching, podcasts and YouTube channels, visiting places, and talking to the family that remains and remembers. I've had to scrape together my family history and my culture, because that was stripped from my family in the 30's in an attempt to be more American. That hard-fought knowledge is valuable to me- as a girl, I felt like I had no place, no roots, no identity. Now I feel like Louisiana is really my home, and a place I'm meant to be. A place I'm meant to help fix.

You can see how Louisiana has inspired me in my comics (7" Kara is set in Hahnville, in my mother's childhood home, a house that still stands on a corner lot) and how I'm inviting it to increasingly inspire my art and the patois I use when speaking. I've stopped trying to erase the Louisiana from my accent, stopped trying to sound American Smart Enough, and relaxed more into being Louisiana Witty. You can see it in Lilliputian Living- the animals and plants I choose to showcase, the way Lilliputians interact with each other, and you can definitely see it in my Louisiana food series. You can see it in the flowers I choose to draw- I try to select plants native to this area in the hopes that people will see the beauty in them and value them more.

I am often not successful in my goal- at least, not in a publicly visible sense. By niching down, I've alienated a lot of the general audience that used to enjoy my work more, without having developed a local audience to take their place. But in a private sense, I am learning and growing, acquiring knowledge and interests, and maybe someday these will serve me when I need them. And I genuinely like learning about these things, going to visit places like the LARC Cajun Village, taking photos and painting things and trying to share them with others. Maybe when Louisiana Renee has cleaned her house and is ready to welcome more guests.