The Rubberplant

(and Other Office Doodles)

Warning to reader: all characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental, especially the 'I' character.

Some weeks ago, I went for my Final Trip to the office where I was no longer welcome. The classic case: I had to clear out my desk, in the traditional cardboard box, complete with the carefully acted out tragic rituals. Back home, I threw the box in a corner of the room and chose to forget about it. A box filled with painful happy memories and trampled good intentions. Shite & Onions! The bastard box from the bloody office just stood there, gently beating like Poe’s tell-tale heart. However, today I toughed it out and opened the goddamn box to rummage through it. It was mostly junk and office riffraff. You know what I’m talking about, the usual shit: bled-to-death pens, crayons, notes, pictures with smiling co-workers standing around a cake, a garden gnome snow dome, large plastic beetles, water guns, a Viewmaster...

Amongst the refuse, I found some of the sketch books I had been drawing in now & then. Just to spice up my lunch breaks and ward off the worst fits of despair and boredom. Most drawings are from the middle period of my time at the place. After the first excitement had worn off and before the great Spells of Resentment had set in, when my eternal repulsion of aesthetic falsity became too great to draw at all. I could no longer fight against the visual trap: of people looking solely with their eyes, not with their hearts. This was most conspicuous at a place like that of course: an advertisement agency, where there is no place for the heart at all. And content, poetry and integrity are dirty words. So let’s say most drawings are from 2003 – 2007. Three books, 200 drawings each. Today, I photographed (in poor quality) a few, not really trying to illustrate a timeline, or themes, or to pin up a story board of 'years at some office' or any corny crap like that. No, just to bring back some of the good things. But if one wants to, he or she can get all that from this. Just look with your heart.

All drawings available in higher resolution (same poor photographic quality though) by e-mail.