INCOGNITO MODE: How Rae White Found Productivity in Anonymity
Launched in June of 2020, the Instagram account @half_headed was conceived as a place for Rae White to anonymously post daily drawings. Now, scrolling through their posts in chronological order, the account becomes an unintentional documentation of Rae’s process of overcoming a years-long creative block. As the small pencil drawings of that first uncertain summer slowly bloom into lively large-scale pastel works, the sense of unfurling echoes Rae’s journey through fear, vulnerability, and reawakening their art practice.
Since graduating from uOttawa’s Bachelor of Fine Arts program in 2018, Rae had struggled to continue creating. The final year of the program, which culminates in a group exhibition of the graduating class’ work, can be an exhilarating but somewhat draining experience. “I was exhausted in the way I think a lot of people are after graduating. Not that I didn’t want to keep making art, but I was just too tired to do anything.” Rae briefly attended Algonquin College’s Pre-Animation program, seeking a more commercially viable use of their skills and background in figure drawing. Uninspired by the narrow scope of the program, Rae left and returned to the proverbial and literal drawing board, just as stuck as before.
“It got to the point where I thought, ‘hmm, I’ve been procrastinating this for two years now. There’s probably a reason for that, but I don’t really want to look too hard at it right now.’” Rae had managed to avoid addressing the roots of their artist’s block until the initial COVID lockdowns forced them inside, almost a cosmically-induced time-out removing all distractions and excuses. Though deep self-reflection isn’t the most enjoyable rainy day activity, Rae considers themselves very fortunate to have had the opportunity. Free from school and work obligations, financially supported, having access to therapy, and able to move into their parents’ home, Rae appreciates their unique and advantageous position granted by the pandemic.
With the downtime of lockdowns and help from their therapist, Rae was able to interpret their extended procrastination as a result of overlapping fears. One of the biggest anxieties related to their time at school: “I was really happy with the work that I did in third and fourth year, and for Grad Show [the end-of-year group exhibition]. I was really happy with it, and really proud of it. Then I was like, ‘wow, I’m not ever going to make anything that good ever again.’” Their final piece, the Geryon Series, was certainly something to be proud of: it consisted of a series of collaged pastel works on paper sprawling over two walls, with one piece wrapping around a corner. The chimeric assemblies of self-portraits, fragmented limbs, and animal parts illustrated the complex, ongoing construction of identity, and Rae’s relation to their body. Recalling imagery of mythological compound creatures, along with the destruction and reconstruction of the paper itself, the works embodied the turbulent process of understanding oneself, and suggested the self as a collection of disparate things.
Rae came to realize that, even years later, they were somewhat intimidated by the strength of this series. They felt that any new creative venture not only had to fill the shoes of their past work, but also maintain the same gait without missing a step. Their solution was to allow themselves to start out small. They aimed to do simple pencil drawings every day, an achievable goal to re-activate their drawing muscles and make creating a habit. For accountability and external motivation to keep up the momentum, they decided they would post their drawings on Instagram.
Sharing artwork online can be a double-edged sword, however: to reap the rewards of your work being seen, you have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of your work being seen. With respected peers and professors following their Instagram account, it felt like a venue heavy with expectation. Rae worried that their informal, experimental drawings, though necessary for their process, would be somehow anti-climactic following their ambitious school work. “I can’t make a shitty pencil drawing every day, and put it here for them to see.”
Rae’s salve for this burning gaze? Anonymity.
Thus @half_headed was established, a digital tabula rasa untethered to their name and previous body of work. Under the cool shade of obscurity, Rae was able to shed the burden of apprehension and expectations from their shoulders, exhale, and prepare to wade back into an artistic practice. They describe a sense of freedom in this anonymity, reminiscent of the early internet years: the previously vast distance between online and offline personas could be a liberating place, an untouched landscape that welcomed personal reinvention. At that time, “you don’t ever put your real name online, no one knows who you are, you’re totally anonymous. There’s a lot of freedom in that. It was nice to get to experience a little bit of that again.”
The sanctuary of secrecy extended into their real life. Upon relocating to their parents’ home at the start of the pandemic, Rae was determined to make good use of their time in isolation by claiming part of the basement as a designated studio. It took them several months to actually enter the space however, anxious about potential drop-in studio visits from their parents. “All this fear that people would have expectations of what my work would look like, or what me making art would look like…I felt like my parents were part of that too. My mom’s been super supportive and has loved the work I was doing in school, which was awesome. But then I thought, ‘oh, she also has expectations for what this looks like.’” At this point in our interview, Rae paused, searching for words, and declared in a tone both playfully somber and urgently serious: “No one can know I’m making anything. There have to be no expectations if I’m going to be able to do this.” So as they were concealed by online namelessness, their initial drawings were made behind the closed doors of their bedroom.
Like Willy Wonka’s dormant factory churning out chocolates unannounced, Rae quietly emerged from their creative stagnation with a steady stream of drawings. Their early works were portraits, fantasy creatures, and figure drawings, their interest in bodies and mythology persisting. These drawings were done with pencil and a small notepad, in an effort to both make the practice less daunting and keep the size and potential mess suitable for working in a bedroom rather than a studio. Soon, Rae introduced charcoal with soft smudges and gestural swipes. Colour crept in through markers and coloured pencils, more low-maintenance materials for their workspace. Many months into @half_headed Rae dipped into watercolours, applying limited palettes over rough pencil sketches of life models. The caption under one of these works posted reads: “I keep forgetting how much fun it is to play with something that’s not a pencil, and is so fluid and malleable.”
As we discuss drawing materials, Rae offhandedly remarks that chalk pastels “don’t do what you want them to do most of the time.” Much like fluid and malleable watercolours, unruly pastels allow Rae to relinquish some control over their mark-making, savouring moments of imprecision. This conscious surrender parallels how they mediate issues with their body, and find metaphysical solace in uncertainty.
During their time at school, Rae’s relationship to their body – both as a part of their subjective being and as an external, observable thing – became complicated. Their understanding of their gender began to shift, and along with it the interplay between their concept of themselves and how others perceived them. The development of chronic pain issues in their final year deepened this chasm between their mind and body as they faced changes in their physical functions. “It’s easy to think of your body as something you control or don’t control. That it’s separate from you.” This loss of control is a source of frustration for Rae: “It’s really easy to be mad at your body, and be angry that you can’t do things, or that your body isn’t able to do things you think it should be able to do. But that’s exhausting, to be frustrated all the time.” While these periods of discouragement never disappeared, Rae began to find figure drawing cathartic. “Life drawing is almost a way for me to experience really inhabiting their bodies.” This vicarious release ultimately helps them reconcile with and navigate their body. It became a way to work through the general mind-body problem, a philosophical point of interest for Rae.
Not overly concerned with faithful representation, their drawings are often fragmented, some parts rendered meticulously and some reduced to nearly abstract shapes. Rae uses the words ‘nebulous’, ‘surreal’, and ‘mythological’ to describe their approach to figuration, and that engaging with vague forms helps them process their murky, shifting relationship with their own body. “Big fan of ambiguity, me,” they say with a shrug and a laugh.
Life drawing sessions, whether in school or elsewhere, provide access to an array of talented models. In the age of COVID, however, gathering a group to huddle closely around a nude person seemed absurd. Fortunately, like most activities, life drawing quickly adapted to digitization by hosting sessions through Zoom. The Instagram algorithm, in all its eerily accurate wisdom, promoted these online life drawing sessions to Rae in the early lockdowns. They were initially hesitant to attend, concerned that the small screen size and possible unreliable video quality wouldn’t provide the detail necessary for the large scale drawings they preferred. They eventually gave in to the algorithm’s persistence, and continues to attend frequent online drawing sessions to this day. Their regular venues include ReConfigure Life Drawing (@reconfigure_lifedrawing), 2B Or Not 2B Life Drawing (@2bornot2bcollective), and The Jolly Sketcher (@thejollysketcher). They marvel at the fact that despite lockdowns, vast geographical distances, and time zone differences, attendees and models still gathered regularly to share in the experience. “I’m in Toronto attending a Zoom call based in Edinburgh, with a model from Columbia, and there’s people all over the world who join in. At yesterday’s session, there’s a woman in India who gets up at two in the morning to join.” Usually not one for social events, Rae still enjoyed the consistent interactions with these groups. Hosts would often encourage willing artists to digitally ‘turn their easels around’ to share their work with the others, so whether the artists verbally interacted or not, there was a warm sense of community.
With ready access to dynamic models and the rekindled flame of creativity at a steady blaze, Rae’s enthusiasm and ambitions grew, demanding larger surfaces to conquer. They migrated from their room to the studio space, tackling large sheets of paper with chalk pastels. Rae’s drawings surged with colour and energy. Their pastel figures are enveloped by masterful line work, and whether a ghostly scribble or heavy, sure-handed contours, they maintain a looseness that still manages to settle into a human form, revealing deep underlying skill and intuitive knowledge of how the body moves. There’s a harmonious balance through the various states of completeness: a section left completely blank or a limb vaguely indicated by a squiggled line is quickly grounded by diffused smudges that give real weight to a hip, or subtly curled around musculature.
As their confidence grew, they began to put extra effort into documenting their drawings beyond a simple snap of their phone camera, including correcting colours in Photoshop. They consider this care to be an act of respect for their work. “I was getting into the habit of valuing what I was doing more. It made it easier to feel like it was something worth sharing.” At this point, they decided their work was indeed worth sharing – with everyone. The shelter of anonymity had served its purpose, allowing Rae to gently tend to their creativity in safety, and it was time to share the harvest with their peers.
In February of 2021 they returned to their original Instagram account – more or less abandoned since starting @half_headed – and made a final post. They presented a link to their accumulation of work, formally inviting (and more importantly, allowing) their community to see the results of their work, both artistic and internal:
“So I stopped checking instagram I think sometime in the spring of last year (apologies to those who'd sent me messages that I didn't see for months). Just couldn't deal with everyone's "day__ of quarantine uwu!!" posts and stories and have since realized that spending less time looking at other people's instagram lives has been good for me.
This was also year 2 of some serious post-gradshow art block/fear of anything I made not being worth anything to anyone but myself and not being worth sharing or even making in the first place. But I really wanted to get over that and start making stuff again so I started a completely new account where I could be anonymous and tried to post a small drawing every day just to have some kind of external motivation to slowly ease myself back into making.
It ended up growing into a lovely place of community where I found some great zoom drawing groups. I think my work has improved and even more amazingly I'm actually /doing/ work and trying to treat what I do with care.
So @half_headed is where I'm doing most of that. I post regularly there and it's not high concept but it's mine.
If you want to follow, go for it. I probably won't follow you back from that account and I probably still won't be spending much time on this one but I wanted to share what I've been working on for the last couple months, now that I'm finally in a place where I feel like it's worth sharing”
A few months after this post, I had the pleasure of interviewing Rae. At that point, their daily drawings had slowed to about two or three a week. Many months later into the present day, they’ve become more infrequent. The anonymity of @half_headed and the daily regimen had successfully gotten them through their initial artist’s block, and Rae has a positive attitude while reconciling with creating less work. “I’m learning to be ok with that! I think there’s an ebb and flow to the kind of making I do. While there’s a part of me that absolutely wants to seem more productive than I am, I don’t want to add any pressure to anyone else who might be struggling with a practice, and feels like they have to be producing at a certain rate.” If that strikes a chord with you, dear reader, please be patient with yourself and don’t be afraid to take your time. Remember that creativity rarely moves in a straight and steady line, regardless of how it seems on the outside. The world is patiently awaiting your art with open arms, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with.