Brann Dailor is drawing his Dalmatian, Thriller, wearing a hat with a clown on it. It’s the final addition to a series of clown pictures he’s been creating while on lockdown, one per day, at home in Atlanta. He thought he’d finished yesterday, when he reached the magic number of 100. But then, he had an idea. He has a pet Dalmatian. There were 101 Dalmatians. He would ‘clown’ his dog. Thriller, and his visual representation, are less than impressed.
“He basically looks humiliated. Like any animal, when you dress them up!” laughs Brann, describing the scene to us down the phone line. “But yeah, I thought yesterday was going to be my last one, and I did a finish-line clown that has his hands up in the air, and he’s just coming through that tape, and in the middle it says ‘I love you’, because I’ve been sending them out to lots of people.”
THRILLER “I haven’t drawn a dog before. One of the things about these clown drawings is that I don’t really know how to draw very well, but I’m teaching myself over time.”
The clowns on these pages might appear fanciful, but they’ve also been a great source of comfort to Brann during these uncertain times. There are sad clowns, happy clowns, occult clowns, satirical clowns and popculture-influenced clowns. No matter what his mood, there’s a clown. The routine of depicting one each day has helped him get out of bed and given him a sense of purpose.
“If there’s any kind of silver lining to the horribleness that is this pandemic, it’s given me the opportunity to slow down, you know? For some reason, my brain has been like, ‘Go go go go go go’ every day, for Mastodon, for 20 years. To be able to shut it off has been pretty awesome, to be honest. And to change focus for a minute, even if I’m not really that great of an artist. It’s this meditation that’s been important to my mental health throughout this experience. Everyone is dealing with it in their own way, but for me it was imperative that I sit down and do this. I draw these two clowns hugging, like, ‘I needed that’, you know what I mean?”