Creativity Quote by Chris Ware

The line reads like a cartoonist catching himself mid-ink stroke: a confession, a self-mockery, and a warning wrapped into one anxious sentence. Chris Ware has always been the patron saint of meticulous control, the kind of artist whose panels feel engineered as much as drawn. So when he worries about the "nauseatingly oily smoothness" of his own line, he is naming the dark side of virtuosity: the way technical mastery can start to look like self-regard.

"Oily" is doing a lot of work here. It suggests slickness, a surface that repels touch, a kind of over-finish that can read as manipulative or dishonest. "Nauseatingly" turns the critique inward, not as humblebrag but as genuine queasiness: the fear that the thing he is best at might also be the thing that distances the reader. Ware's art is famously clean, precise, and controlled; this is the voice of someone who knows that cleanliness can become a mask.

The kicker is the motive clause: "when all I'm trying to do is make it as clear as possible". Clarity is his stated ethic, almost a moral project, especially in a medium where clarity is often conflated with simplicity. Ware insists on clarity that can be dense, architectural, even oppressive, because life feels that way. The subtext is an artist negotiating the paradox of craft: the more seamlessly you draw, the more your hand disappears, and the more you risk turning human mess into design. This is the tension at the heart of Ware's work: empathy rendered with instruments sharp enough to cut.