The further you venture into the forest, the darker it gets. That’s very clear when you journey through Dublin artist Jacob Carignan’s new adult coloring book “From the Woods.”
Carignan’s pop-surrealist, pencil-line drawing style blends nature with machinery to create fantastic hybrids in a world all his own. Many of his creations depict a human figure with the head collaged with, or morphing into, a variety of other objects. A young woman may have a head made up of television sets, or a lumberjack-looking fellow may be topped with stumps and mushrooms and birds. Carignan calls it “organized chaos” — “that’s kind of what life is,” he said in a recent interview.
Those headpieces are Carignan’s way of explaining that “home” isn’t just a physical place, but something that resides in the mind.
“Wherever you are, whoever you’re with — that’s your home,” Carignan said.
Usually, the 23-year-old Dublin man works in extremely detailed line drawing. However, his ability to create those intensely focused pieces took a hit last November, when he watched a close friend take the dark path into a deep depression, ultimately culminating in suicide. With that on his mind, Carignan said he couldn’t concentrate long enough or hard enough to finish anything in his usual style.
Needing both a diversion from his pain and a medium to discuss it, Carignan hit upon a solution. Adult coloring books have grown immensely popular over the past year or two, to the point where the world’s largest colored pencil manufacturer, Faber-Castell, announced a shortage due to the trend.
Carignan put pencil to paper, starting with some simplified versions of his detailed pieces and eventually putting together a whole story, picture-heavy but with some words to guide readers and drawers along the way.
“The whole story is a metaphor for depression,” Carignan said. “I want that to be something that people are able to talk about — because nobody ever does.”
The story follows a boy, drawn by the siren song of birds into the deep, dark forest. Once he’s there, he encounters a cast of characters, some of whom try to convince him to stay in the forest forever. Each stark, black and white page is filled with patterns, shapes and characters, waiting to come alive from the touch of a colored pencil. The story is linear, and the ending need not be given away here, but since the reader has the ability to color the pages as he or she sees fit, a happy or sad ending is theirs to decide.
Carignan said the book is selling well — he didn’t even have a copy of his own, he said, and had to grab a copy from Carr’s Store in Dublin, where he works his day job. The book is available at that store, as well as on Amazon, for $10.
Coloring in the book, he said, is “just relaxing.”
“You kind of meditate and zone out for a while,” he said. But along with that escape from reality, that momentary respite from all of life’s troubles, comes the opportunity to confront those very same issues, something crucial in one’s personal development.
“Understanding who you are — even the dark parts — is important,” Carignan said.
Arts Editor Ben Conant can be reached at 924-7172, ext. 226, or bconant@ledgertranscript.com.