We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dan Piraro. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dan below.
Dan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
As a toddler, before I can even remember, my favorite pastime was drawing. Some of my earliest memories were of wishing I could keep a point on a crayon so I could get more control and detail. I just seemed to be programmed to create images. I also enjoyed sports, spent a lot of time outdoors, with toys and make-believe, and all of the normal activities of children but virtually every single day of my life I have made time to draw or paint.
By the time I was in middle school I knew I wanted to make my living as a creative person, though the actual direction I wanted to head was vague. In high school, I enjoyed all forms of the visual arts—drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, pottery, photography, etc.— as well as creative writing, theater, and singing in a band. I was always going in many directions at once, jumping from project to project, while my mother often encouraged me to settle down and specialize on one thing. She wanted me to be a painter and that’s where I thought I might end up but I also had dreams of being a performer, writer, stand-up comic, set designer, and actor. I figured I’d never be able to do them all but why not give it a shot and see what gained traction?
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I started out in my early twenties as an apprentice to a commercial illustrator and did well in that profession for a number of years. I was bored out of my mind with the relative lack of creativity it required and so I was always looking for a way to make money in a more creative field.
In my mid-twenties I began drawing cartoons and sending them to newspaper syndication companies. I happened to land a five-year contract with a small, now-defunct syndication company out of San Francisco and thus I began the newspaper comic feature, Bizarro. That was in 1986 and I’ve been doing it now for over 36 years. I’ve won a few awards for my work and published more than twenty books, most of which were related to Bizarro. I post each week’s cartoon on Bizarro.com each Sunday along with a short, humorous essay that reflects some aspect of my personal life.
About seven years ago, while working on Bizarro, a story began coming to me out of nowhere, and I began writing it down, just to see what it was and where it would lead. At first, the story came in fits and spurts over a period of several months, then my partner and I decided to move to Mexico from our home in Pasadena. It was 2016 and a great time to be leaving the country for political reasons and my partner and I also realized I’d never be able to afford to retire in the U.S. (People often think every syndicated newspaper cartoonist is necessarily rich. Nothing could be further from the truth!) So we spent a lot of time and energy moving to Mexico and six years later, we’re still glad we did. During the international move, however, the story stopped coming.
After a couple of years of getting settled in Mexico, episodes began coming to me again. Around this time I decided to semi-retire my seven-day-a-week job writing and drawing Bizarro comics for newspapers and hired a longtime friend and colleague who cartoons under the name Wayno to write and draw the Monday-Saturday Bizarros while I would continue to handle the Sunday comics.
Freeing up my time, I was then able to buckle down and finish writing the strange story that had begun coming to me again, and doing so took the better part of a year. Once it was finished and I was sure I liked the story and that it had a satisfying ending, I began illustrating it as a graphic novel called “Peyote Cowboy”. It is quite long and involved and I knew it would take me years to complete illustrating it, so instead of waiting who-knows-how-many years to show it to people, I began posting it serially online as I finished illustrating each episode. When enough of it is completed I’ll seek a publisher but for the time being, it is available at peyotecowboy.net for anyone to read online for free, as it is being created. To help fund the time I’m spending to illustrate it, I’ve asked for reader support on Patreon.com. I can be found there under the semi-pen name I’m using to write it: Diego Piraro.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Creativity is the human mammal’s superpower. It is literally the force that has built everything from language to cities to AI. I believe it is literally what we are meant to do and the thing that satisfies us in a deeper way than almost any other activity. By “creativity” I do not mean only the arts. Bringing anything into existence—be it a meal, an object, a story, a poem, a new way of organizing something, etc.—is an act of creativity. If your job is not offering the opportunity to be creative, find one that does. A human living an utterly uncreative life is like a bird that does not fly or a cheetah that doesn’t run. It can only lead to depression. Put on your cape and use your superpower.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
Many creative fields are finding it more difficult to make a living with the advent of the Internet. Cartooning is a prime example. It has never been easier for a cartoonist to get their work seen but never more difficult to get paid for it. Since most people get their news from the Internet, newspapers and magazines are going out of business left and right. They may still have an online presence but since so many things online are free, they are not willing to pay as much for cartoons, articles, photos, and the like as they did for their print editions. Consequentially, those of us who create content are struggling to make enough to survive, When artists are forced to hold down so-called “regular jobs,” they get less art done or have to give it up entirely. One of the ways that many of us are able to keep going is through the generosity of fans via donations and financial support through sites like Patreon.com. I encourage everyone who enjoys the arts to find some artists they like and help them out with a monthly donation. Even a buck or two a month from enough folks can make the difference between finishing that graphic novel or stopping work on it to stand behind a fast food counter for eight hours a day.
Contact Info:
- Website: bizarro.com & peyotecowboy.net
- Instagram: @danpiraro & @peyotecowboycomic