Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Stephen Notley. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Stephen, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

I think it’s fair to say I’m happy as an artist/creative. In conversation with my artist/creative friends, I’ve many times said how grateful I am that I’ve been able to live and work doing stuff that interests me. Not everybody is so lucky. My cartooning gives me an outlet to dig into myself, churn the ol’ ego, and then apply several hours of close-detailed work to the result. It’s therapy without the astronomical bills. Meanwhile, my work in the video game biz allowed me the opportunity to collaborate with dozens of talented people to create stuff I never could have on my own, to the delight and pleasure of millions of people. What a great way to live!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hoo boy… talk about your open questions! I got into cartooning quite young, doing my own newspaper-style strips as a teenager, then stepping up into getting published in The Gateway, the University of Alberta student newspaper. The Gateway was a great place to be, as it provided a cohort of peers, a requirement to produce work to deadline, and an opportunity every week to see the work go out and reach readers. Lovely! Can’t recommend it highly enough! I started out doing cartoons but quickly branched out into movie reviews, opinion pieces, spot illustrations… anywhere there was white space on a page, I could figure out a way to fill it with some carefully crafted ink. As to what sets me apart from others… tough question to answer honestly, but I think I uniquely combine a wide range of interests, a playful attitude, a commitment to rigor and an ability to comprehend complexity and express it with clarity. Not everybody can boil a whole film, novel or philosophy into a single cartoon featuring fewer than 75 words! What am I proud of? I guess the fact that I can do the work, and have done it, for years, with over a dozen books to show for it. I am a producer in the verb-to-noun sense; I produce things, creating somethings out of nothing on the regular every week.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

As an artist, I admit I find the notion of NFTs to be rather laughable. When we’re talking about “Non-Fungible Tokens,” it seems like the most basic NFT is simply a piece of original art created as a one-of-a-kind physical object by an artist. That’s about as non-fungible as it gets. No doubt some folks have made out like proverbial bandits on the NFT craze, as some folks aways do when some speculative hoo-hah comes along, but to me the scam/value ratio of NFTs is sufficiently high that I’m perfectly comfortable leaving it to other folks to explore.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Ha! I’ve often wondered if I have a particular goal or mission driving my journey, and I keep coming back to a scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Roger pleads to Eddie that he could never be a murderer and says, “My whole purpose in life is to make… people… LAUGH!” Not the most sophisticated artist’s statement, maybe, but dangit, it resonates with me to this day. That’s my mission in this life and I’m glad to have it.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.angryflower.com
• Instagram: @bobtheangryflower
• Twitter: @BobTAngryFlower

Image Credits
Stephen Notley