Christopher Mcholm, an artist from Cranbrook, Canada, doesn’t need to be asked how he creates his art – it’s straight to the point. In a visual culture where we’re often asking artists ‘what program did you use? Is this digital? Is this AI?’ Christopher is working with pen, pencil, crayon, paper – simple. The only question is: does Christopher draw with his non-dominant hand? His bare and cute drawings are full of childhood whimsy – if you didn’t know that Christopher is in fact an adult man, then you would easily think that these were drawn by a child. It’s an interesting art, the act of drawing authentically like a child. Or, perhaps Chris’ work just challenges the very idea of what ‘adult art’ is supposed to look like.
“I love love,” says Christopher, that’s why his drawings often include figures, animals and even flowers hugging and kissing. “Doesn’t it feel good to be loved? Hot-dang, I know so – so my drawings express my love for love, especially for the ones we love.” Christopher tries to let his “heart speak”, keeping his conscious thinking off the page and lets his hand take over as he collapses the form of human figures into kissing blobs, romantic smears of felt-tip and charming headfooters. He draws until there’s nothing else to draw (or at least until he has to go to work or be a parent). His influences are vast, too many to mention, so he settles for the old favourites: the sun, mountains and rain. “I just ‘go’ or ‘do’, at the heart of the heart there is a sweet child, so it makes sense why my style has a childish vibe to it,” says Christopher. “It makes me so, so happy that people get this and share love through my drawings. What a cool, cool thing.”