a story from behind the art: PARTY GHOST

This little creeper is the unofficial mascot for The Feels Club... it's the the first illustration I allowed to leave my desk and be seen by any other eyes other than my own. 

When I sat down to draw and the ghost came out, I realised pretty quickly that what I had drawn was a metaphor for anxiety... a ghost of my own  - unseen but felt.
In that time I thought about the power it had over me; all the ways it disabled me, all the ways I helplessly enabled it to.... all the people all too commonly doing the same and all the ways I craved to take back that power. To reap anxiety of its hold. 

After sitting with those thoughts for a couple of days, I came back to my desk and the ghost. And that's when I added the party hat and threw in a cheeky twist on a Sia lyric for good measure... 
Suddenly that small gesture changed the mood of illustration entirely. I had disempowered the ghost and all it stood for, I made it my own. 

The Party Ghost is a dig at anxiety & depression... the invisible enormities all too often carried yet unseen. It represents the awkward times, the misunderstandings & the god damn stigma surrounding mental health. But above all it represents the power to disempower our everyday ghosts and befriend our everyday fears.