How did I get here????

My very first gallery exhibit opened last night in NYC

Jan 06, 2023

As I was curating what would end up in the show I had no choice but to look through years and years of work hiding in all the corners of my office. I had a wild mixture of pain, growth and laughter in going through my sketchbooks and cartoons. It’s made me think so much about when I “started” drawing many years ago. I put started in quotations because like most adult artists, I obviously started when I was five but I won’t subject you to the comics I drew then. I began drawing in 2013 (with the hopes of becoming a cartoonist) when I was living in Los Angeles working 2 jobs, had 2 internships on top of training to be a tap dance teacher. One of my jobs was at a theme park development company (hilarious) and I was a general assistant to any of the designers that needed help. I don’t recall assisting literally anyone. What I really did was sit at a laptop and pretend to look busy with watching Turner Classic Movies (I wasn’t the only one there with this hobby!). It was at that desk that I got the idea that I wanted to draw funny little pictures of my mom trying to explain plots of movies to me. That eventually turned into a series I made for a few years (I always hope I’ll return to it) called Talkies with Hilary’s Mom.

It’s very entertaining to look back at my early drawings and see how far my work has come. Part of me cringes when I see how strange my faces look even in my sloppy sketchbook doodles, but the other part of me is like “ok damn I’m so good now.” ( humblest of brags )

When I moved to New York, I had no idea if this whole cartooning thing would ever work out, in fact I was almost sure it wouldn’t. It’s a somewhat insane career to choose and I honestly wouldn’t advise anyone to get into it unless they absolutely have to. I was waitressing, nannying, doing sort of anything that I could to get by, but I always kept my sketchbook on me. I drew as much as I could between gigs, at bars and coffee shops, and eventually found the courage to walk into The New Yorker to submit my first batch of cartoons. It was terrifying and thrilling.

It took me almost a year to the day to sell my first cartoon to them. When it happened I of course felt like I was on cloud 9—fully untouchable (!!!!!), but then something happens after your first sale. You think the jobs are gonna start rolling in like hot cakes after that! You’ll become world’s greatest freelancer! But the truth is, you won’t. You have to keep working, tirelessly. It doesn’t really get any easier. There’s zero security let alone benefits. But if you enjoy it you keep going, keep drawing, keep writing. There’s major lows and major highs in this lifestyle. I’ve been fortunate enough to have my art reach a large audience through The New Yorker, my books, and even on TV—but I still have times throughout the year where I think I’ll never get another job, I’ll never get another paycheck, I’ll never really be stable. It can be so scary to work for yourself.

But in this past month as I’ve been pulling together everything for my gallery exhibit, I’ve really had a chance to take it all in and literally hold 10 years of work in my hands and I just wanted to give myself a moment of a win. There’s so many things I wanted to accomplish when I moved to New York and a lot of them have actually happened—that alone is truly wild. So while my goals keep getting loftier because DUH, today I’m just really happy with all that I’ve accomplished. I’ve gone from “…are you that girl that draws in bars?” to “hey you’re that girl that draws in bars!” Talk about leveling UP.

I’ll stop being such a sappy lady now — and share with you a bunch of little sketches I found as I scavenged through hundreds of sketchbooks that really made me laugh.