ArtBeat May 2024 – Name That ‘Toon!

By Ed Goldman

On my 69th birthday in 2019, I began writing a free online column, The Goldman State, which posts three times a week. Most of the columns are accompanied by a cartoon roughly suggested by that day column’s content and signed by an artist named Edgy.

Well, I am he, and he is me, yes, Edgy’s me and we are all together, to lamely paraphrase the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus.” “Edgy” is just a quasi-hipster version of my initials, Ed G. It sometimes surprises me how many of my readers, now in nearly all 50 states, don’t know that I also draw the cartoons. Yet it wouldn’t surprise me to learn they don’t really care, for which I respect them.

This isn’t my first foray into cartooning. Not counting the crayon drawings I did on my bedroom wall when I was a kid in New York City, I drew a weekly comic strip called “Belmont” for the Long Beach Marina News from roughly 1970-72. It featured a young blonde slacker (Belmont) who hung out with a phalanx of similarly unambitious guys at a beer bar, the real-life Belmont Billiards, in the real-life Belmont Shore, just down the hill from Belmont Heights. I hope that clears up why I named the character Belmont.

About a year into writing and drawing the strip I introduced a character named Ernest Givingway, a would-be Great Novelist whom I drew to resemble me. It was my first attempt at what could be called avatart—and while the principal character isn’t in my drawings for The Goldman State isn’t named, he’s based very much on me. This is less egotistical than you might think. I’m just very easy to caricature.

I’ve been alternately delighted but also slightly depressed by the fact that on some days, the cartoon elicits more compliments than the column. As you can see from the samples, these little vignettes—which I draw in black Sharpie pens and colored pencils, and occasionally mount on colored construction paper when I’m too tired to fill in the background—are not exactly acmes of the art form, which I’ve loved since childhood. But they do add a little visual spark to my 600-word satirical rants about whatever’s in the news.

The late art dealer/gallery owner Michael Himovitz saw some of my cartoon art many years ago and suggested I paint. I did—acrylics on canvas-board wood panel or cardboards, whichever was handy—and, at his suggestion, even got into doing comical sculptures. But what always floated that fabled boat for me were the economy, vibrancy and immediacy of a small cartoon. I never aspired to or felt capable of drawing editorial cartoons—not when there are brilliant practitioners of that still around, like my friend Jack Ohman—but knew that what I was doing relaxed and sometimes exhilarated me.

In truth, it’s always felt like a throwback to rainy days when I was in elementary school. The teachers couldn’t let us go outdoors for recess—perish the thought we’d get fresh air and smell things you smell only in the rain—so they’d give each of us a sheet of butcher paper, crayons and floor space. Heaven.

Not long ago, on a very rainy day in Sacramento, I found myself experiencing a sense of Deja vu. I could hear the rain pounding against my windows and on my roof, and the traffic down the block in full anxiety mode. Yet here I was—not on the floor but at my desk, not drawing on butcher paper with crayons but bond paper with colored pencils and ink—and that same feeling of Heaven came over me. 

You can subscribe to my column and cartoons for free at goldmanstate.com.  Edgy and I thank you.