L.A. artist Amber McCall hails from a trailer park in Bell, California. Raised by a single mother, McCall drew from her imagination when the cost of toys left her with little else to play with. Instead, her drawings were her friends, though even as an adult, McCall’s art retains the innocence of a child waiting by the window for her schizophrenic father to come home. Her doodles, creatures, and cherub figurines take on the aesthetic of 80s analogue cartoons, the images familiar and friendly enough to catch you off guard with captions that launch you into the mind and anxieties of a young woman.
McCall has seen her fair share of tough shit. “Laughing at all my misfortunes has always been the best way for me to keep going.” Having grown up on food stamps and the occasional kindness of her mother’s many boyfriends, McCall went on to drop out of art school once the car she was living in in with all her supplies was stolen and she couldn’t afford to re-enroll. Before ever finding success as an artist and animator (McCall was recently listed on HuffPost as one of Instagram’s 15 Badass Female Illustrators) she slept the nights on random couches in between shifts as a night-time nanny. While at times her reality has been bleak, her art has always stayed in color.
McCall’s drawings reflect the emotional divide between trauma and kitsch, like learning that Santa isn’t real because your parent died wearing the costume. An art world Matilda, Amber McCall’s drawings are so steeped in the particular anxieties of an insecure child, you can’t help but want to reach inside and hug them. There’s a reason cute things can make a person cry, a tension explored vividly through in McCall’s drawings.
“I'm heavily influenced by retro art and anything that looks sad and strange,” states the artist. “Some of that comes from buying 25 cent VHS cartoon tapes from thrift stores, even though we didn't have a VCR. I would take them home and just stare at the covers, imagining what kind of amazing things could be going on in there.”
Currently, McCall isa regular animator for Super Deluxe, run’s an online shop called Thunderpuss on Etsy and Witchsy, just designed the next Burger Records fan club package items, and is the art director on Hatchback, a film created around the likeness of her life. wasting away in Arizona.
“I have other young women message me about how a drawing I did made them feel better. I think a lot of women try and hide their sadness now a days, because we all want to be strong but it’s nice to know that many of us go through the same things, so why not laugh about it together? My main message in art is -being alive is weird and kinda fucked up but also cool.”
Written by Bryn Lovitt (Currently an English Professor At University of Iowa. Writer for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Paste, Pitchfork, Noisey, Rookie Mag, NYLON, Spin & more)
McCall has seen her fair share of tough shit. “Laughing at all my misfortunes has always been the best way for me to keep going.” Having grown up on food stamps and the occasional kindness of her mother’s many boyfriends, McCall went on to drop out of art school once the car she was living in in with all her supplies was stolen and she couldn’t afford to re-enroll. Before ever finding success as an artist and animator (McCall was recently listed on HuffPost as one of Instagram’s 15 Badass Female Illustrators) she slept the nights on random couches in between shifts as a night-time nanny. While at times her reality has been bleak, her art has always stayed in color.
McCall’s drawings reflect the emotional divide between trauma and kitsch, like learning that Santa isn’t real because your parent died wearing the costume. An art world Matilda, Amber McCall’s drawings are so steeped in the particular anxieties of an insecure child, you can’t help but want to reach inside and hug them. There’s a reason cute things can make a person cry, a tension explored vividly through in McCall’s drawings.
“I'm heavily influenced by retro art and anything that looks sad and strange,” states the artist. “Some of that comes from buying 25 cent VHS cartoon tapes from thrift stores, even though we didn't have a VCR. I would take them home and just stare at the covers, imagining what kind of amazing things could be going on in there.”
Currently, McCall is
“I have other young women message me about how a drawing I did made them feel better. I think a lot of women try and hide their sadness now a days, because we all want to be strong but it’s nice to know that many of us go through the same things, so why not laugh about it together? My main message in art is -being alive is weird and kinda fucked up but also cool.”
Written by Bryn Lovitt (Currently an English Professor At University of Iowa. Writer for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Paste, Pitchfork, Noisey, Rookie Mag, NYLON, Spin & more)
"Your art is what I wish everything was like…fun,
pretty, lewd, cute, sometimes repulsive but only with
a wink o' the eye and a slap on the butt." -
~Natalie Ribbons of Agent Ribbons & Tele Novella
pretty, lewd, cute, sometimes repulsive but only with
a wink o' the eye and a slap on the butt." -
~Natalie Ribbons of Agent Ribbons & Tele Novella
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