Boxed in. Antony Cox 2020
A digital art response to COVID-19 and a world that often seems to want to crush individual creativity.
Originally posted on May 29, 2020
Being a Graphic Designer is all I wanted from the age of 14, once the reality of not being a professional sportsman was accepted, (it never really has). Honestly, I had no real idea what that meant, but it seemed cool and well paid. In recent years I have questioned that devotion. Despite a 25 year career doing something I love, events of recent years challenged me in ways I never expected. Forcing questions about why I do what I do.
Thankfully, due to the support of those closest to me, I found a path. I changed my relationship with what I do. I took a different approach to work, accepting a role in doing something completely different, in a very different environment. This entirely positive experience has empowered me and reset my perspective. It also created a whole new set of friends.
My relationship with Graphic Design has survived, I am glad to say. But my relationship with it has also changed. I continue to freelance for selected clients as I always have. This part-time approach has set me free, once again allowing me to love what I do.
Finding my love of all things graphic with digital art
At the heart of this reconnection is an inner desire to set free graphics from within free of commercial constraints (but perhaps influenced by them).
Thoughts. Antony Cox 2019
At my lowest point, I produced my first piece of digital art entitled Thoughts. It helped me remember who I was and make sense of the jumble the brain can make of the world around us. Is it good? Does it matter? The answers aren’t that important.
So in this strange time of Covid-19, I have produced my second piece, Boxed in. We can all feel boxed in at times, even when it may seem to others to be very different! Covid-19 has trapped us all in very different ways since it arrived, some good, some bad. But we will survive and find a way, just as I have.
