Your resident artist talks cancer, creative origins, and the shadow cast by fathers

You already know my podcast guest Alexander Naughton. After all, you've enjoyed his art here on The Intrinsic Perspective for the last three years. He's the man behind the curtain, responsible for the beautiful, evocative, and sometimes just plain fun headlining images accompanying each essay. And so of course you already know him, because that’s how art works. But the human behind the art also happens to be an incredibly interesting person.

Alex is not only a world-class illustrator—the best way to support him is to commission him, btw—he’s also a talented writer with his own Substack, Illustrated, where he pens meditations on the artistic process and the business of illustration (he’s drawn for The Guardian and Politico).

We talk of the challenges of becoming an artist from outside the upper class, how Alex left art to pursue engineering and then was drawn back, his Edinburgh of heather and ruins and coastlines (he went to the high school Harry Potter was based on), and the semiotic significance for the young artist of early video games and magazines and comics and prints. But also heavier, weightier subjects too. We talk about his father, who was not supportive of Alex’s artistic career, and who died this year of bladder cancer. Then, at the same time of his father’s death, Alex—himself now with a four-year-old daughter—was officially diagnosed with bladder cancer, having to undergo treatment this last summer.

Looming over the conversation is the long shadow The Father casts for the young artist son (especially The Father who is not supportive of art) and how a parent’s penumbra informs what art you make and what meaning you make. It is a portrait of the artist as a middle-aged man, and it is my favorite conversation I’ve had on any podcast, period.

Oh, and did I mention he has a dulcet rolling Scottish accent? Here’s a preview: