Vigilant and Barking

Pedro X. Molina, March 16, 2019.

A concentrated 3/4-profile self-portrait is how we always meet the artist exposing their inner strengths and weaknesses and just as the great cartoon will create life with just four lines, Pedro X. Molina has defined the anatomy of what the cartoonist does in just four lines too:

"A colleague has said: "We cartoonists are like guard dogs at night, we bark at EVERYONE who seems suspicious to us. Three out of four times it will be a squirrel or a cat, but that fourth time it will be a thief or a murderer". This is exactly it, YES! I am a DOG... and will continue to be one."

The cartoonist may be distracted by the noise of the day, but when the villains are nailed, it is so worth the barking that may have gone before.

Guard dogs are protectors. They react on a background of something grander beyond their own being. Humankind and its rights to live, first and last.

In this we have proof of why cartooning is not limited within its national borders. References are local, but the fundamentals of cartooning are inherently international. Pedro X. Molina for one has been as vigilant a critic of the Venezuelan crisis as he has been of the no less dire situation in his native Nicaragua for years.



The cartoon shown is courtesy of Pedro X. Molina and must not be reproduced without his permission.