Paul
Szep was born in darkest
Canada, which accounts for the way he talks, eh? He was a hockey
player and worked in the steel mills, which accounts for the way
he thinks..
Two
Pulitzer Prizes, Two Sigma Delta Chi Awards, a headliner, the
International Thomas Nast Award, 3 Honorary Doctorates. Fellow
at Harvard University and one National Cartoonists Society
Reuben.
Since
retiring from the pages of The Boston Globe in 2001, Szep's
work now features regularly in numerous publications including
The St. Petersburg
Times and is syndicated by The
Creators Syndicate. If you wish to add Paul Szep's work to
your website, newspaper or publication, or commission the artist
for original work, please email info@szep.com.
Signed prints and some original cartoons are also available upon
request. For fees, ordering information and other details, please
email.
In
his own words:
I'm
really a failed hockey player. I grew up in Canada and wanted
very much to play in the National Hockey League. I did actually
play. At the time, each professional team owned certain areas,
and I was under the Detroit Red Wings. In those years, Detroit
had very good teams, and my prospects for making the parent club
were not great. Cartooning is the other thing I did fairly well.
I always thought that if I could not make it into the NHL, then
I would become a cartoonist.
I
actually started doing sports cartoons, combining my two loves
in a sense, for the Hamilton Spectator when I was in high school.
That was my introduction to the newspaper business, and in doing
the sports cartoons I was introduced to the political cartoons.
Hamilton did not offer an intense and heavy political atmosphere--like
some of my contemporaries had when they were starting out--but
it did provide a nice outlet for my kind of satire. I came to
view my work as primarily satire using a visual format.
I
specialised in illustration for four years at the Ontario College
of Art. After graduation, I freelanced as an illustrator, and
then I was hired by the Financial Post to do cartoons and illustrations.
The next thing I knew I received an invitation to come down to
Boston to try out for this job at the Globe. They'd been looking
for a political cartoonist for three or four years. The bond with
the Globe worked instantly; it was just a good marriage from the
beginning.
I
am a very political individual and I think this is reflected in
my work. Some people, a lot of people in the profession, do gag
cartoons, but I always try to do cartoons that make a political
comment. However, I do think that today there is a difference
in the kind of comment that is effective, and I think you have
to use humour much more than in the past. But I like to think
of cartooning as satire, biting humour. It is very hard for me
to do something trite, yet I know the American public probably
appreciates that kind of humor more than they do the heavier handed
type.
Getting
the ideas for the cartoons is definitely the hardest part of the
process. Getting up every morning and knowing that you have to
make a comment, that you have to come up with something. I probably
go through four or five newspapers every day. You're always looking
for something, trying to think of something, that you can comment
on. You're always looking for some basic inequity. You're always
looking for some figure in politics who is flogging himself. There's
always a plethora of subjects. It's just a case of trying to sit
down and decide which you can make work best; what subject matter
will work best.
I
think cartoonists should be like burrs under the saddle of some
egomaniac, kind of gnawing away every day. I think the public
likes cartoons because it gives them a vicarious pleasure that
they normally can't get in any other way. It must be very frustrating
never to have that kind of outlet. Having said that, I must say
I really enjoy what I'm doing. I take great pleasure in having
that release every day.
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