Whether irreverent, ironic, or absurdly entertaining, cartoons do much more than make us laugh. Incisive by nature, these witty, intelligent reflections on the human condition invite us, with clarity and empathy, to engage with the things in life that we sometimes may rather not confront.
For Liza Donnelly, hand-drawn lines are a means of launching political movements or calling leaders into account, of questioning the way we live our lives and finding common ground. Her cartoons have been featured in The New Yorker, where she has been a contributing artist and writer since 1979.
The new exhibition at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, “Liza Donnelly: Comic Relief” - explores the organic evolution of Donnelly’s desire to express herself and to engage with the world through drawing, tracing her transformation from?a painfully shy child growing up in Washington, D.C. to her emergence as a New Yorker artist and activist.