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A magazine that takes its time. Celebrating a conscious, slow and creative life
EXTRA
NOTEBOOK
& GIFT TAGS
Being different
gives the
world color.
NELSAN ELLIS
ISSUE 42
FINDING THE
CALM
IN YOUR
MIND
The softer
side of
NEW YORK
HOW TO COME
TO TERMS
WITH YOUR
TRAUMA
Comics
are HIP
AGAIN

Inspiration
THE COMIC
STRIP
@heyheysu
IS HIP
(AGAIN)
Mental health comics are thriving online. Cartoons are the perfect way
to make heavy topics lighter, notes journalist Ilse Savenije.
I can’t remember reading many comic books as a child.
Sure, I raced through the weekly Donald Duck magazine,
but most comic albums—even the classics—didn’t do
much for me. However: now, I’m a fan. Is it because I keep
stumbling upon short comic strips online? Or because the
format works so well with the way I like to draw and write
about my own life? The strips that pop up in my feed these
days are different from the classic fictional tales with
a dramatic twist and a happy ending. More often, they’re
autobiographical snapshots of what’s happening in
someone’s life or head. Experiences, reflections, newly
won insights, and past and present fears: personal things
tend to lend themselves well to being drawn in one or
more panels. They’re visual diaries that let you, as a reader
(or should I say ‘viewer’?), step into the creator’s shoes for
a moment.
The autobiographical comic as a genre isn’t new, but
I feel it’s taken on a new shape in this digital age. From the
illustrators I follow via social media or their newsletters,
I regularly see all kinds of little gems—funny or moving.
Hannah Jacobs, from the UK, once shared a strip about
how ‘the word “should” haunts me daily’, a constant
interference into what she ought to be doing at different
moments during the day. Chilean illustrator Fran
Meneses—working in her familiar pink and blue—shows
how she keeps having to pause her reading because
memories pop up and distract her. And in another strip,
she illustrates the therapeutic effect that cleaning her
house has on her.
Sometimes the stories are less lighthearted, such as the
strip in which Meneses vividly describes how she felt after
a man harassed her in the supermarket. American artist LA
Johnson published an illustrated story on The Washington
Post’s site—where the newsroom has appointed a
dedicated comic journalist, but more on that later—about
how she and her sister each had a miscarriage a week
apart, and what that was like. Racism, climate stress,
gender politics, or how to live in a country at war: I’m
learning there’s no subject that can’t be turned into
a comic, one strip at a time.
RECOGNITION + HUMOR = COMFORT
Trying to put a strip into words is (like with a photo or
movie) almost impossible and doesn’t do the work justice
(which, at least, is the ‘excuse’ I use when it comes to my
attempts). But having said that: the obstacles of life—small
or large—are well represented in today’s comics. That’s
exactly why they often hit home, I notice, and why I find
recognition in them. Like in a strip I once saw by the Italian
illustrator Lorena Spurio, which starts with: ‘There’s no
place as unpredictable and weird to me as my mind.’
She brings different corners of her mind to life in ten
panels. Sometimes creators strike exactly the right chord,
somewhere between painful recognition and relieving >
-- TEXT ILSE SAVENIJE --
_ 121

Psyche
BOND
WITH YOUR
BODY
Writer Tatjana Almuli spent a lot of time
talking about her trauma. But only when she
tried therapy that focused on her body instead
of her mind did she really begin to heal.
104 _ -- TEXT TATJANA ALMULI ILLUSTRATION ASYLE – @ASYLEART --
_ 105

The correspondent
The Soft
Side Of
NEW YORK
When writer Thomas Heerma van Voss
visited New York, he experienced people as
strikingly generous, helpful and interested.
That wasn’t what he expected to find in
a city where so many struggle to survive.
-- TEXT THOMAS HEERMA VAN VOSS --
108 _

Picture story
FEMALE
Self-assured women,
unyielding or willful:
French artist
Carole Pueo paints
one distinctive
woman after another.
She calls her work,
‘image theater’.
STUDIES
-- PAINTINGS CAROLE PUEO --
_ 81

Look inside
Italian designer and yoga teacher Stefania Di Petrillo
lives with her daughters in a bright, colorful apartment
in Paris, France, surrounded by creativity.
66 _
-- PHOTOGRAPHY MONICA SPEZIA (LIVING INSIDE) --

Inspiring lives
Artist & activist
American sculptor Augusta Savage
fought for her art. She started
sculpting as a child and she would
continue to do so her whole life,
against all odds.
-- TEXT LIDDIE AUSTIN --
Augusta Savage with
one of her works.

Interview
‘WITHOUT
MY
EXILE
isabel allende
I WOULD
NOT BE
A WRITER’
Isabel Allende’s flight from Chile changed
everything. It made her a writer. In a life that
has never lacked material for stories, writing
became the thread that ties it all together.
-- INTERVIEW LIDDIE AUSTIN PHOTOGRAPHY © LORI BARRAX --

FLOWMAGAZINE.COM
PHOTOGRAPHY JOLIEN HUYGHE – @TEN.ONDER HAND-LETTERING MEVROUW KNOT