Today we’d like to introduce you to Dave Mercier.
Dave, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I was 27 years old and living in the same small Connecticut town I had grown up in when my first long-term relationship ended and shattered my sense of self-worth. I had always called myself an artist but didn’t really have anything to back that claim up, so I bought a drawing tablet and started making silly pictures to make my friends laugh. Seven years and thousands of comics later, my career as a cartoonist has elevated me in every regard and afforded me my life-long dream of living in Los Angeles.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do, why, and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I make comics for the internet, mostly Instagram these days. I’ve always thought that the best small deed you can do for anybody is to make them smile, so that’s my motivation – I want to make people’s days a little better through my art, jokes, and storytelling.
I was raised religiously and broke away in my early 20s to explore other ideologies, particularly ones that don’t claim to have all the answers. Much of my work is informed by themes of existentialism, self-awareness, and the human condition.
While that stuff can be pretty heavy, I think it can be nice when taken with a light approach. Like, instead of “oh no, we’re all gonna die someday,” I think, “Oh alright, I don’t need to worry much because we’re all gonna die someday.”
What do you think it takes to be successful as an artist?
In a dry, capitalistic way I define success as making enough scratch to pay rent every month. Beyond that, real success is about how effectively an artist is able to convey their message – does the image draw the viewer in and tell the story it’s trying to tell? Does the joke take the reader on a journey and catch them by surprise?
Maybe not surprisingly, the key to success in both regards is to just do it every day. Keep making stuff until you can’t get it wrong anymore (still working on that, myself).
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
Almost all of my work can be found online!
MercWorks: http://instagram.com/mercworks
Hop Dude: http://instagram.com/hop.dude
and just my website: http://mercworks.net
Folks interested in supporting my work can check me on Patreon!
General: http://patreon.com/mercworks
Hop Dude: http://patreon.com/hopdude
Contact Info:
- Website: http://mercworks.net
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/mercworks
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/mercworks
- Other: http://instagram.com/hop.dude
Image Credit:
Dave Mercier
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