Hubris

Hugging Was Enough For a While, but Then . . .

January 31, 2024 /

Mark Kershaw Weekly Hubris Banner

Addison

By Mark Kershaw

Mark Kershaw Weekly Hubris.

ATLANTA Georgia—(Hubris)—February 2024—This portfolio of black-and-white whimsies first appeared in Hubris in February 2019, and features a half dozen of Kershaw’s single-panel cartoons depicting trees (of which he has drawn many). As in the second toon below, trees harbor unexpected visions for our discerning Atlanta observer, and dryads invisible to the hoi polloi. When Mark sends me a tree, it often echoes one of Shel Silverstein’s of yore: endlessly giving. (“Once there was a tree . . . and she loved a little boy. And every day the boy would come and he would gather her leaves and make them into crowns and play king of the forest.”) But Mark’s trees also receive, have agency, and gumption: hugging’s no longer enough for them. They want more. 

Kershaw trees

Kershaw tree woman

 

Kershaw tree rings

Kershaw parrot

Kershaw palm trees

Kershaw hugger

Mark Addison Kershaw says his influences include James Thurber, Jean-Jacques Sempé, Charles Schultz, Berke Breathed, and several cartoonists from “The New Yorker.” Kershaw was born and brought up in Nebraska, spent college dabbling in philosophy and a few decades during/after in Minnesota, and now makes his home in Atlanta, Georgia, where he may be spotted walking his dog around the lake behind his home, taking photographs, and thinking cartoonish thoughts. (Author Head Shot Augment: René Laanen.)