"I hope to actually get back to painting someday... soon. I sort of transitioned into cartooning from painting"

A complex mix of longing, pragmatism, and artistic identity sits beneath those few lines. The desire to “actually get back to painting” signals a pull toward an earlier, perhaps more essential practice, while the qualifier “someday… soon” holds both urgency and the hesitation of a crowded life. The ellipses read like breath taken mid-stride: momentum keeps moving forward in one medium, even as the heart glances back at another.

Word choice hints at emotional texture. “Actually” implies authenticity, a return to something felt as truer or more personal. “Sort of transitioned” suggests the shift wasn’t a single decision but a gradual drift, opportunities, deadlines, and audience responses nudging the path. Such transitions are common: cartooning offers regular publication, public feedback, and a rhythm of deliverables; painting often asks for solitude, slower time, and a tolerance for uncertain outcomes. One medium compresses ideas into punchy clarity; the other expands them into layered ambiguity. It’s no surprise that a steady cartooning practice can eclipse the space that painting needs.

Yet the border between the two is porous. A painter’s eye for composition, color, and silence can deepen a cartoonist’s panels. The tight economy of cartooning, what to leave out, how to land a beat, can sharpen a painter’s structure. The wish to “get back” is less a retreat than a call to integrate, to let skills migrate and cross-pollinate. Public recognition often crystallizes around the work that circulates weekly; audiences know the cartoons, not the canvases. That visibility can become a cage, even as it sustains a career.

At its core, the statement is a promise to oneself, wrapped in the friction of time and habit. Turning “someday” into “soon” means carving out protected slowness, risking the quieter work, and allowing identity to be plural. The return, when it happens, will likely carry new clarity earned in the pressurized arena of cartooning.