#22: Zoe Si
Someone You Might Like if you enjoy great line and have a penchant for marathon training.
#22:
I've enjoyed watching Zoe Si's meteoric rise from lawyer-who-draws to New Yorker cartoonist extraordinaire, and it's been like watching someone skip the awkward adolescent phase of cartooning and go straight to creating work that sets a new tone for illustration in cartoons.
I first saw Zoe's work when she was still practicing law in Vancouver (a fact that makes me feel like I've accomplished approximately nothing with my life). She started posting her cartoons on Instagram, capturing the particular neuroses of modern life with a perfect line economy and composition that felt so measured and confident. Her use of pattern and texture is always so deliberate, but restrained.
Her gag cartoons were these tight little observations about anxiety, relationships, and the special kind of hell that is existing as a human being who desperately wants everyone to think they have their shit together. Her recent cartoons on training for and running marathons have been particularly entertaining. Also, she’s excellent at capturing dogs.
Her style is unmistakable – clean, approachable linework with characters that somehow manage to be adorably cute and existentially distressed. It's a visual contradiction perfectly capturing how most of us move through the world these days: presenting a palatable exterior while internally screaming.
She's now a regular contributor to The New Yorker, celebrating her 5th anniversary with the mag, has illustrated multiple children's books, and recently organized and co-hosted the unofficial New Yorker Cartoonists Centennial party with Ngozi Uzaku I wrote about last month.
Her wrap-up of the weekend is on her own Substack, here:
We were talking pens and brushes at a bar last weekend when the bartender asked us to draw his cat in return for free martinis. I think this might be the fastest any cartoonist has drawn a cat in human history.
What sets Zoe apart isn't just her drawing skill (which is considerable) but her perspective: She brings a fresh eye to tired subjects. Her cartoons about anxious overthinking don't just say, "Haha, anxiety, am I right?" – they pinpoint the exact bizarre thought process your brain follows at 3 AM when you remember that time seven years ago when you called your teacher "Mom." Or the existential dread that straddles your brain on the worst possible occasions.
Her work sometimes reminds me of Quentin Blake— the looser illustrative work with splashes of watercolour that she posts from her sketchbook more so than the clean, finished picture-book style of her gag cartoons. If you like that kind of work, I’d recommend you subscribe to her Substack.
The above illustration ran in issue 43 of Like The Wind Magazine, a quarterly, UK-based running magazine that tells beautiful stories, highlights them with gorgeous photography and illustrations.
Zoe wrote an excellent piece in The Emancipator last week about the intersection of her legal background and her cartooning. It's a fascinating look at how different disciplines can feed each other in unexpected ways. Her analytical lawyer brain clearly helps her distill complex emotions into single-panel clarity bombs. In fact, her work during the pandemic hit such a nerve that she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for 2021. Pretty damn impressive for a relative newcomer to the field!
Anyway, you can subscribe to her Substack here:
Jason, what the heck - this is so wonderful. I am blushing and a little teary. I owe you a shot or another free martini. <3
Loved this — have followed her work for a while. And yes, Quentin Blake often comes to mind when I see her stuff! Bottled delight!