Inside Issue #19: A Conversation with artist HTMLflowers
By Rivka Yeker
Illustrations all by HTMLflowers
Art is something that is often a reaction to pain, yet it is not necessarily always a reflection of it. Grant Gronewold, who has gone by HTMLflowers for a decade now, produces work that explores illness with a slight influence of nihilism in its rawest and most abrasive forms. His illustrations resemble truth, a sort of semblance of ultimate reality. A raw statement rather than a sugar-coated one. While his approach to life plays as an integral part of his art, the work itself isn’t meant to intimidate anyone, but rather show life as it is for someone who has seen and been through and experienced so much.
Disabled and/or chronically ill people are often expected to look at life with constant optimism and a sense of glory. People don’t want to see the sick being sick; they want to see the aftermath, hear about the recovery, witness the progress, but only the happy moments. HTMLflowers simply refuses to give into whatever it is society expects of him. His work is a retelling of his life and the way he perceives the world.
HTMLflowers’ work tells stories through single images alone. Addition to his comics, he prints his work on mugs, t-shirts, pendants, and other things that people can display and wear. The images printed on these objects aren’t necessarily ones that people would expect to see on items for sale. They don’t have any catchy phrases or fun slogans. They are mostly drawings of people. People in their element, in their most natural states, existing regardless of what systems may put them down. It is in this work that HTMLflowers’ artistry comes out, in the work that captures vulnerability and the loneliness of the human experience. It is through his lens that we are able to find solace in sickness, even if it is not happy or optimistic. Even if it doesn’t say things like “It is going to get better.”
Your work is self-reflexive and eery, a sort of powerful glance at the human experience through simplistic yet complicated illustrations. What do you want people to take from your art?
Fear, revulsion, uncertainty, hopelessness, terror & the unique species of callous bliss that accompanies those disabled truths.
What is your favorite artistic medium when it comes to your own practice?
I like thinking a thing and then making it real, I don't care what form it takes, no favourites, just a compulsive need.
How did you get into illustrating?
My mother wanted me to be a painter & I couldn't stand real life.
You have a very specific experience as an artist with disability. Do you want that to come out in your work?
I am disabled & I want to empty my entire heart, I won't hide anything about myself if I feel it needs freeing. I think that can be a tool to expose disabled truths to the world but the most important thing for me is to be honest with myself.
Are you someone that likes to publicly talk about your disabilities / illnesses on social media?
Constantly, nauseatingly. I'm still not over being ignored as a child.
Who are some of your inspirations?
The doctors who talk down to me, the nurses who use unsanitary techniques risking my health, the government that makes precise moves in the dark to ruin what's left of our public healthcare system, the mutation that transforms my body & destroys my life, the people I date that can't be patient when I disappear into the wards.
Your online store is titled "No Visitors." What does that come from?
I don't like having visitors in hospital, this building is a loveless machine that can only be survived, I will not endanger my love by bringing it into this place. a lot of art comes from there, loveless survival. the hospital is inside me and when I started writing the comic series "No Visitors" I named it after that place inside me where I'm always alone.
What could you say to other aspiring artists, especially those who live with disability and/or chronic illness?
Your mutation is your weakness, your mutation is your strength, never relent.
