It was like the '50s when Abstract Expressionism accompanied free jazz. Punk art was sloppy with a lot of day glo colors. I was pulled into the energy of that, but I was too much of a draftsman by that point to feel completely comfortable with it. That's when I did my Zombie Mystery Paintings rough, crude, and fast. The emergence of new visual languages and art forms is not so much about play as it is about how the playful and serious coexist and interact.
Cartoons are a form of mental abstraction, the pictographic language of our time.
There's a huge middle ground between humor and seriousness, a vast region of abstract thought. Cartoon graphics have been evolving since the Lascaux Caves, Egyptian hieroglyphics, illuminated manuscripts and there has been a backlash of people trying to get back to those forms.