Episode
DMA#49: Creativity within Confines & the Poetry of the Page with Grant Snider
- Published
- May 20, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 303
- Processing state
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Summary
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.newyorkcartoons.com I am sitting at my drawing board in my sweltering Manhattan apartment. Grant is sitting in his room in Wichita, Kansas. The contrast between our two environments is immediate and palpable. His background is calm, lined with books. There is a quiet, steady, midwestern stillness to his frame that makes my own neurotic, constantly vibrating New York energy feel unhinged. I have been a big fan of Grant’s work for a long time. If you have spent any time on the internet looking for art that makes you feel deeply seen, you’ve likely stumbled across his comics. They’re incredibly insightful, minimalist, and poetic. He manages to take complex, abstract concepts like mindfulness, anxiety, the crushing weight of the creative process, and distil them into beautiful, clean, uncluttered panels. His style is a brilliant amalgamation of influences, echoing the whimsy of Quentin Blake and the neurotic genius of Roz Chast, yet entirely his own. But there’s a detail about Grant’s life that always manages to short-circuit my brain. Grant is a practising orthodontist. By day, he is literalizing the mechanics of human smiles. He operates a medical practice in Wichita. He looks into people’s mouths, adjusts wires, and fixes the geometry of their teeth. And if that wasn’t demanding enough, he also has five kids. He is managing a small, highly energetic army of children, running a medical practice, and somehow still managing to be one of the most prolific and poignant cartoonists I’ve ever met. When you spend your life as a working artist in a city that charges you fifty dollars just to leave your apartment, you tend to view time as a hostile currency. The idea of holding down a demanding, highly technical me…