Cartoonist
Carolita Johnson has an innate flair for the art of caricature. “I’ve always done my best, and caricature is one of those things, a natural form of self—expression after reading all those Charlie Brown paperbacks,” she explains. Johnson attended Parsons School of Design intending to study illustration, but instead took up fashion design when she was told she had “no aptitude for color or composition.” After graduating from Parsons in 1987, she left for London with a one-way ticket. Only fifteen years later, after time spent abroad in the fashion world and in academic circles, she returned to New York to illustrate. Johnson had something to say, but “no ability to draw.” She worked on developing her style of color illustrations, but the cartoonist’s life still remained elusive: “I still really don’t understand that cartoonists were paid to draw. I do not know where, in my opinion, magazines get their cartoons from, generous draftsmen who have nothing else to do?” The cartoon editor of The New Yorker magazine, Robert Mankoff, saw something in her work, and five weeks after her return to the United States, she was published in The New Yorker.
She took the time to talk to me about slogans, eavesdropping, inspiration, rejection, and lunch with The New Yorker cartoonists at Pergola Des Artistes.
Reference: identitytheory.com, 2007
