The quest to visually capture the multifaceted nature of human discourse for the August special issue proved a significant artistic challenge, one that former Visuals Editor Roberto "Bear" Guerra navigated with a clear vision for artist Armando Veve. For years, Guerra and his colleagues had admired Veve’s distinctive artistic contributions to High Country News, and the stars finally aligned for this special edition focused on "Conversations," which also marked Guerra’s final issue as part of the publication’s masthead. Veve embraced the assignment with his characteristic enthusiasm and signature style, crafting an image that delves into the essence of communication. His artwork features a whimsical assembly of unexpected conversationalists engaged in both tense and amicable exchanges, thoughtfully interspersed with moments of convivial silence, thereby mapping the ebb and flow of meaningful dialogue.

Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Veve’s artistic journey has intersected with High Country News on multiple occasions, including a memorable visit to the publication’s office in Paonia, Colorado, a couple of years prior during a road trip to a Telluride art gallery. This piece offers a deeper look into Veve’s creative process and his philosophical approach to art-making through his insightful responses.

Veve’s artistic methodology is deeply rooted in the immediacy and tactile quality of graphite on paper, a medium he often likens to a form of visual writing. His drawings are constructed in sedimentary layers, beginning with graphite and evolving through watercolor and colored pencil. For the cover illustration, digital techniques were employed to expedite the process, yet even these digital applications remain guided by the artist’s hand, ensuring that the drawing and color coalesce seamlessly on the printed page, which Veve regards as the ultimate realization of his work in the context of publications.

In his everyday life, drawing serves as Veve’s primary means of processing the world, a practice that centers him, helps him make sense of chaos, and gives tangible form to his inner thoughts, allowing him to sift through them for meaningful insights. He actively seeks inspiration by cultivating heightened awareness of his surroundings, striving to notice details that might otherwise go unnoticed. Veve endeavors to reduce his reliance on digital devices, prioritizing direct engagement with the physical world and human interaction. His practice includes long walks, sometimes for photographic documentation, but often as a way to create mental space and stimulate physical circulation, which in turn fuels his creativity. More recently, he has found himself drawing more from memory than from reference materials, a shift that has proven invigorating and opened up new avenues of expression on the page. For Veve, drawing is not merely an artistic pursuit; it is a continuous dialogue with the past and the future, an invitation to observe more closely and to think in novel ways. It also functions as a deeply personal compulsion, akin to scratching an itch, a drive to peel back layers and delve deeper in search of symbolic meaning or narrative resonance.

Veve’s long-standing collaboration with the publication on monthly illustrations for the "Heard Around the West" column is palpable in the cover artwork, with alert readers potentially recognizing familiar characters. He expresses a deep affection for his work on the "Heard" section, cherishing the peculiar and often humorous stories curated by Tiffany Midge, such as the man who propelled a peanut up a mountain with his nose or the dog named Ghost who famously escaped his home and integrated into a coyote pack. Indeed, a closer inspection of the cover reveals subtle "Heard" easter eggs, including Bo the Bear and Ghost, characters who first graced the pages of that column. Veve enjoys the practice of remixing his earlier creations, forging connective threads between them and breathing new life into recurring motifs and characters. His cat, he notes, is a recurring hidden element in many of his pieces, an invitation for keen observers. He conceptualizes his entire body of work as a single, evolving universe, with each new story providing fresh subject matter and thematic exploration, all emanating from a shared wellspring of creative energy.

He views his visual vocabulary—the objects, symbols, and motifs he employs to convey ideas—as akin to characters in a play, appearing when they best serve the narrative or simply to inject a personal inside joke. He has a particular fondness for characters that are out of their original context, displaced from their usual settings. This theme of displacement, he explains, stems from a surrealist impulse to defamiliarize the familiar, finding fragmentation and cross-pollination to be more fitting metaphors for his understanding of the world.

The development of Veve’s unique style, characterized by its blend of humor and whimsy, can be traced back to early fascinations with narrative imagery, from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to the comic books that populated his childhood home. As a child, he was captivated by "I Spy" books and the intricate, often perilous, virtual environments he constructed in The Sims, which fostered a sense of discovery and narrative agency. This democratic aspect of art, where the viewer actively charts their own path through an image, resonates deeply with him, much like his appreciation for maps and cross-sections that highlight interconnectedness.

Veve approaches his work iteratively, building it in layers, and meticulously editing and refining it, much like a writer revises a manuscript. He finds a profound stillness in the act of drawing, a counterpoint to the frenetic pace of contemporary life. The deliberate, simple, and ancient stroke of a pencil on paper offers something elemental, a connection to the earth through graphite and clay encased in cedar. This practice aligns him with a long tradition of art created by human hands, a lineage he perceives as increasingly challenged by the rise of artificial intelligence and commercial pressures, yet one that stretches back to the earliest cave paintings, illuminated manuscripts, WPA murals, and the imaginative realms of pulp science fiction.

Describing "style" as a potentially superficial term, Veve prefers to think of it as a materialized voice, akin to speech patterns or a personal gait, reflecting how he understands and processes the world. Humor is an integral component of his work; if an image elicits laughter, he pursues that impulse. Whimsy, he contends, is a potent force that inspires free association and destabilizes established structures. The humor in his pieces often arises organically from the interactions within the artwork itself or through associations made by the viewer, transforming the drawing into a conduit for these moments.

For the specific cover illustration, Veve grappled with the abstract concept of conversation, initially conceptualizing it as a literal representation of interaction webs, envisioning a "landscape of conversation." This phrase became the guiding principle for the entire concept. His exploration led him to medieval paintings and maps, where he found inspiration in their stacked spatial arrangements and their ability to invite viewers on a journey of discovery within the image.

The most challenging aspect of visually depicting conversation, Veve notes, lies in striking a delicate balance between inclusion and omission. Cultivating sufficient negative space and moments of repose between visual elements is a perpetual artistic challenge. Much like a well-executed conversation, he explains, there must be pauses for meaning to accrue. His initial sketches, he admits, were too crowded and overwhelming. Consequently, he opted to reduce the scale of elements and open up the composition, creating visual pathways for the viewer and incorporating moments of quiet contemplation, exemplified by the poignant image of a flower mourning discarded stumps.

Among the characters populating the cover, Veve holds a particular fondness for the solitary prairie-chicken, appreciating its palpable sense of bewilderment.

Those interested in exploring more of Armando Veve’s captivating artwork can find him on Instagram at @armandoveve or visit his website at armandoveve.com.