Friends, countrymen, ghosts!
For the month of August, we have been lucky enough to work with a featured artist — Ren Brian. Ren is a dear friend of the TERSE. community. It is also important to note that Ren has one extra vertebrae.
Ren’s work can be found on Instagram @foullorraine. You’ll also see more work from her in the coming month, accompanied by pieces from our brilliant contributors.
Ren says the following:
My name is Ren, and I’m a 21 year old artist from Salt Lake, now living in Denver. I make art to soothe, poke fun, and explore softness in a jagged, overwhelming, heartbreaking little world.
For a while now I’ve been trying to balance the overwhelming terror of being alive with the ability to act like a functioning person day to day, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. I’m an emotionally soft person, and I’ve often hated this about myself because I felt it made me a hyperaware doormat. Being a human is so much so fast and there are so many wealth hoarders and narcissists and bigots and assholes and the earth is dying and like, honestly, how is everyone not crying all the time?? I know the world is vicious. I know I’ve seen incredible love when I let myself look. This doesn’t cancel out the horrible, but I have to look and I have to hope. I know that humans are good. Love, in the forms of good food, passing kindness, mutual aid, sharing abundance, finding common ground, connection, recovery, standing up for someone, or what have you, is a balm to the unrelenting sting of this place. Being an empathetic, soft person is actually cool and necessary in making a better world for everyone. I have bitter, hateful feelings in me, but two things can be true at once. I have been so hurt, but I’m trying not to be hurtful. I make art to deal with that jumble of feelings in different ways, from an overt alligator gently reminding that we’re all frightened children, to squiggly, fanciful doodles that make me feel good. And a lot in-between, because Jesus Christ, that’s a lot of feelings.
My partner encouraged me to start sharing my art online, and in January of this year, I finally did! I began a project where I snail-mail small prints to anyone who wanted to sign up. Then I started an art instagram (@foullorraine!). My heart exploded as friends and family and strangers signed up and followed, and I was plain old delighted to share my silly illustrations with this lovely group of people. I have mountains of ideas and motivation to keep drawing all my knobby-kneed fellows, comic panels, doodles, and silly happy things. I’m excited and grateful to share them.
I’m exploring what it means to be a frightened human being while also being a creature that wants to live and make and love. I’m so happy to connect with other creatures, too.
Ren / foul.lorraine is a 21 year old creator. Ren is person in recovery, and makes radical art about that. Ren also makes art about abolition and the small beautiful joys in a world that can be horrible. Right now, Ren making silly mostly radical illustrations of creatures for the modern kvetch! Ren’s Instagram is @foullorraine.