We're getting all moothy for the upcoming NaNoWriMo 2024, which will be written, partly, in Scots language. We'll be writing as we remember it. No' half!
... because no-one can be arsed to write us a real Wikipedia. Maybe you don't warrant one, some might say, with a pinched church-lady expression, as though we issued a bad smell or articulated an oppositional political view. Don't warrant, don't deserve. Who are you, anyway, mouthbreather?
RAT UNDER PAPER is the pen name of Canadian illustrator A. G. Duffy, a name used mostly when there are issues involving usernames that have already been taken. How a name like "Amanda" could have ever become popular enough, let alone attached to "Garland" and "Duffy" is a mystery, but there you go.
A. G. Duffy, aka RAT UNDER PAPER, is best known for a style of illustration described variously as witty, amusing, charmingly edgy, and "a ball of pent-up something - not rage, not bitterness, but something requiring vengeance or medication".
"It's a tall order for a Gen Jones," says A. G., "But so far, we've kept our work from appearing nasty or over-the-top melancholic. We didn't get every toy we wanted in the 60s and 70s, but we won't build a pop culture museum dedicated to our lost youth, or romanticise neurosis as art."
Her work has been published in numerous publications, including weekly columns in TV Guide and The Wall Street Journal. Other illustrations, including several magazine covers, have appeared in Christianity Today, Out, Forbes, Ms, Good Housekeeping, The Atlantic Monthly, New York Daily News, Saveur, Report on Business, Fast Company, Sales and Marketing Management, Readers Digest, Ryerson Review of Journalism, Quill and Quire, Playboy, Saturday Night, and Entertainment Weekly, among others.
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION:
A. G. was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba on September 3, 1959, the only child of Leslie Ruth (née Walker) and Owen Duffy. The family moved to Kelty, Scotland for a year and a half, before settling in Toronto.
A. G.'s fanciful and attenuated childhood was spent drawing, designing and writing elaborate comic operas, musicals and plays. The illustrations in Jack and Jill, Oor Wullie, the Broons, and MAD influenced her stylistically. At an early age, she realised she was a lexical-gustatory synaesthete and balletomane. This had no effect on her drawing but inflated a runty ego.
A.G. attended the Ontario College of Art (and Design) from 1978-1982, graduating with honours.
CAREER:
A.G. aka RAT UNDER PAPER began illustrating for Homemakers, The Globe and Mail, and Toronto Life while still at OCA(D). She got a kick out of the notion of freelance illustration when she noticed her work on the page of a newspaper read by the subway patron sitting next to her.
.
She has worked mostly for magazines and newspapers over many years. She has an ongoing comic strip, LOSER GRRL, which highlights the foibles of a flawed heroine who has no intention of saving a dirty, messed-up world, but loosely associates with its denizens, occasionally transforming them into inanimate yet articulate objects. The main character bears a likeness to A. G. Duffy (the illustrator). Her sidekick, Down Boy, is a representation of a succession of beloved (real life) bull terriers.
She paints portraits both large scale (over 5') and small (under 4") and is in the process of restoring a discarded dollhouse into a Gothic art gallery of miniatures with a live viewing audience of vintage Liddle Kiddles.
Her illustrations often feature hand-lettering, which was turned into the font "Duffy Script" by ShinnType/ShinnDesign. A new font is in the works, which combines a traditional serif typeface with elements of Duffy Script.
PERSONAL LIFE:
A. G. likes houses; the work of Yoshitomo Nara and David Hockney; popcorn; knitting; Chopova Lowena; Bodoni; Neo-Calvinism, old garden roses; tomato soup; the impression of luxury; Modest Mouse; the Smiths; Duran Duran; ballet (still); the Arts and Crafts Movement; old school painting; black turtlenecks; Ruinart; Farrow and Ball colours; Supergas; novels of J. M. Coetzee, D. H. Lawrence, Haruki Murakami and Martin Amis; the Oxford comma; the royal "we"; ayce salmon tataki, and Schubert - all of Schubert, obsessively, but mostly his piano sonatas and impromptus.
She lives in Toronto, and says "Though it was once a great city, it's still good. Naysayers should STFU."
Apr 29
The day begins, ends, with Schubert.
For this, an LBD, slinky,
not tradwife – Franz would not be wowed
by ruffles or cowlike florals.
How would you know anything of
composers, says Mister. Nothing
wrong with a woman who knows how
to dress like a lady. We pour
glasses of Ruinart – one for
me, one for Franz - and wait until
the second movement of the fifth,
our favourite, before we sip.
Apr 22
The river runs through the neighbour’s
backyard, east to west, then dips south,
missing our yard completely. We’ve
never seen it, but we’ve heard it
alright; it sounds just like Mr’s
voice, whispering, as though he were
telling secrets in the garden,
things we should know but never will.
That’s Mr for you, always plays
his cards close to his chest, we’d say,
if the river came close enough
to give us a hint, its pssshpsssh
no longer mysterious but
making sense at last, while we get
on our knees with gratitude for
the warning we knew was coming.
Apr 18
There You Go, part 2
Why do you not trust, we say to
ourselves, though the truth is that we
have looked through every closet,
nook and cranny in search of - we
admit this – things we lost, lost things,
things of which we were the steward
and we’ve no idea what went
wrong. We’ve found the missing Barbie
doll, the glass tabletop that went
awry, even eclipse glasses.
It takes a week before it dawns
on us that we threw our missing
cheap-ass earrings into the leaves
of a potted ficus at the
mall. If we go looking for them
out of curiosity, please
please please do not let us find them.
...............
Franz Schubert - March Militaire
Woody has arrived for a glass of red and a peek at the dollhouse. At first, he doesn’t see it, even though he nearly tripped over it; the thing takes up half the kitchen.
“Well, would you look at this,” says Woody, giving the roof a dad-shake. “You’ve really got a project going here. The roof is nearly done. What are these, tongue-depressors you cut down to make shingles? What is it with roofs being a theme in your life?”
“You remember! We don’t know why, but the fact that you remember makes us so happy, we could cry.”
“Jiminy Cricket on a cracker, Kettlecorn! How could I forget? I feel I was there when the TV antenna crashed down on your childhood house and scraped a bunch of shingles off the roof. You could see daylight when you went into the attic, you said. There’s more, but I like it better when you tell the story.”
“This part I like to tell people when they’ve had too much to drink. They’re incredulous, as they should be, but by the time they’ve keeled over for the night and have woken the next day, they have a hazy sense of a story that they can’t quite recall. And then we’re off the hook.”
“YTA, Kettlecorn.”
“AITA, or do you want to hear the story again? Drink up.”
“NTA.”
We pour Woody another glass – it’s Lambrusco, cheap by some standards but trendy by others.
“We went up into the attic, which was an adjunct to our bedroom. We both loved and hated that room. It looked charming, really, wallpapered in giant cabbage roses. To the right of the bed, if you were lying in it, was an inset bookcase. And if you pushed the bookcase, it opened into an attic. Auld Owny promised us that he’d turn that attic into a secret playroom.
It never happened, as you know. What happened instead was a thunderstorm, a lightning strike, a high wind, the crash of the antenna, and the loss of several roof shingles. It bothers us that some of the details are missing, but we know how to embellish to our favour. We like to say we were able to see daylight when we went in the attic, and we certainly know that Auld Owny never repaired the roof, even when Ruth begged him. ‘There’s no money for that,’ he’d scowled. When she mentioned it again, he walked out of the room. So – was he planning his retreat already? Some say yes. Bram does, but Bram likes to be the one who figures out nefarious behaviour and the path towards doom.
Here’s the part you enjoy, the addendum. We realised that Auld Owny was never going to repair the roof and was planning to fly the coop with a mistress. The two events are intrinsically linked. We saw pain etched on Ruth’s face. Shock. We were impatient with her, like any decent teen, but our impatience suffered into fury. We took a tire iron and poked holes in the attic ceiling so that the question of seeing the glint of daylight was no longer a question. We poked holes that were so -shall we say - generous, that water streamed down the living-room windows when it rained. At the sound of the first pattering of raindrops, Ruth and I ran to the kitchen to retrieve our collection of ice-cream buckets and line the windowsills. We will never forget the sound, the insistent plunking into the plastic tubs. And when the tubs overflowed, puddles formed and a small lake filled the room. We bought paddles, telling the salesman at Aikenhead’s that we’d be back for a canoe later.
It’s a nice twist, you must admit: a brazen lass flinging open the attic door – a hidden room behind a bookcase, no less! – then with studied deliberation: poke, poke, poking between the rafters until she could see stars shining back at her. And on rainy days, she had a lake.
No one questions us. They do not dare. That a tire iron could push beyond layers of roofing material and shingles is ludicrous, but it makes for a wonderful example of tenacity. Braveheart revisited.
Who wants to hear of the rolling of eyes and quiet resignation? We prefer the alternate universe to the real one in which Ruth nudges us, sighs, ‘If I could buy him out, honey, I would. Our time here is done. By the time the roof is ready to drop, we’ll have moved to a new home.’ If she was unhappy about the inevitability of moving, she did not show it. She saw the departure as a new and exciting adventure. ‘We might find a nice little place on the Island. I’ve heard of a building where tenants have dinner parties together on the weekends. We’ll have fun, and believe me, we could use a little fun.’
He looks like he's somewhat enjoying his unending and protracted immolation. In every painting, every illustration, there's the sly wince: this is a mere flesh wound, a scratch. I could get to like this.
We can't say if he really does like his - shall we say - position or not, but he makes the perfect valentine anti-hero.
The chocolate cake (his battleground, or playground, depending) was baked from a Leite's Culinaria recipe. Highly recommended. The frosting we made was caramel; it seemed to suit Sebastian.
We also made an anti-valentine cake topped with dead roses on top one year. Never to be forgotten.
