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2022

New! Holly’s comics, zines and articles are online. Go to “Comics, Zines and Articles” page. Or hit: https://issuu.com/hollyenglish

Donation Link

Support Holly to continue her artistic projects. Holly is an artist with a disability (See Graphic Novel page for info) and survives on a DSP with huge medical expenses. If you like Holly’s work, please donate and support her in getting the support she needs, to survive and continue creating.

A$30.00

You can find Holly on Instagram: byronbay_artist

OMG 🤪 there is SO MUCH I could say on this topic of the many, many, MANY good women single & available & not many good men⚡️. No, I’m NOT being negative, it just IS. I feel like no one is bold enough to just SAY IT. 🌊🐟I used to say “There’s plenty of fish in the sea”, but with age & experience, I can confidently say that men simply have not had their Revolution like women (It’s happening, veeeery slowly), but we live in a externalised & internalised misogynist, patriarchal society where 99% of violence is perpetuated by men AND there’s a spectrum: even just subtlety patronising comments with males in conversation. 🤮🖤 Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot of men & some of my closest friends are men (some are married, some are not, doesn’t matter.)💕But I have dated/slept with pretty much everyone & I keep coming to the same conclusion that there’s a fuck-tonne of amazing single women out there & not many great single men. I don’t care anymore, because I honestly don’t want a partner. I’m so satisfied at the moment with what I’ve got in my intimacy life (sometimes I get my foot squeezed & my back rubbed- you know who you are!🕺) but the terrible self-doubt & blame I would get from myself & society, around why I didn’t have a boyfriend or a partner, almost killed me during my 30’s. 🤕 Now of course, I see I was FINE. ⭐️And as I’ve admitted before, I dated a lot of hot 🔥 fuckheads.😞 🌈There’s so much blame on the woman. No one ever questions the guy!!!!💫 Draft page from graphic novel. PS the only guys who don’t seem to agree with me & say “there’s no good women”!) are serious dickheads who wonder why they can’t get a root or keep a relationship.🍃⚡️Go get therapy!!!!! 💗🫶🏼 Our Dave 🌈💕🫶🏼🌊 …what to say…I want to acknowledge this man on this day. It’s been a year since Dave went missing at sea @benjamin_safari I feel a sense of loss. Our relationship was long-term, friendship, lovers, complicated, simple. It was everything. Sometimes it was nothing. 🖤The first 3 pics are from the last time I saw you, the next 2 from your little memorial at Broken Head, & the last one is a screenshot from the now “missing persons” file. I know your dead🌊😢⭐️. When you disappeared, I walked to the beach every night for weeks, through pouring rain & starry skies. I cried, I raged, I spoke, I sung to you out to sea🎶. I had therapy about my complex grief. Complex grief is different to normal grief- I found out. I talked to your family, friends. I organised a bloody fundraiser! 🤪 🍃It hurt so much, I felt protective, & ownership over you & my grief.. then of course, time roles on & there is more life, more death💫. The other night when we were talking about you a huge asteroids (or space junk) burned across the sky with a huge flame behind it 🔥☄️burning out on the horizon. I knew it was you. A little sign🙏🏼. Thinking of you today brother. Wish you were here to watch the AFL grand final!!! 🏈💗🤘🏽⚡️ The one & only time I’ve drawn on paperbark. Hazelnuts with leaves🍃. Found the bark on the road near my house.🌱 drawn with watercolour pencils.🌈 💗This is a very special place to me, currently in the midst of being demolished (see pics 2-4 here). 💫No 5 Marvell St, Byron Bay (we used to spell it with one “L”, hence in the comic). Diagonally opposite @bayleafcafe 🌱(& previously ‘HERTZ rent-a-car” it is now a VERY BUSY STREET in what is to be considered in the CBD of Byron. 🤘🏽But 30 yrs ago, as a teen, it was a quiet, weatherboard I used to stay/live/crash at over many years (@timfitzgeralddell you’d remember Jimmy’s house? Also Jasper & Pevetra “broccoli trees”). TOWN was (mainly nth) Jonson St. Definitely not OUR street! 🫶🏼This was a slow-paced residential street full of old houses with big backyards & friends every third step. 🥰Oh, how things have changed. I make an effort to collect one thing from each house that I’ve lived in, that is now being demolished. This panel is from my comic book “Byron Bay, A Time & Place”, which was shortlisted for The Australian Comics Award @ledger_awards & is available @sticky_institute Melbourne & @quimbysbookstore Chicago, & also free to read via my website (link in Bio). Yes, I was an extreme hippy/feral⚡️. PS Santos @santosorganics was north end of Byron next to old library ⭐️@richmondtweedregionallibrary which is where the (tiny!) Golden Breed @goldenbreedsurf shop is now. 🌊PS I can’t stand carob anymore!🤮😘 Today’s gross pics, absolutely unedited, unfiltered❤️. 1 week after surgery. The back of my head looks like a Vulva🤪. This is my 6th surgery in 3 years (not to mention the tri-monthly round of injections, scans, painful discograms where they put needles into your discs, expand them with liquid while you’re awake & measuring your extreme pain levels-google it, navigating with specialists, Centrelink, NDIS refusal & $$$), I think I am finished now. 🐱 No I’m not fixed. And yes that is okay. It has to be.👑🙏⚡️🐳 So stop trying to fix me with your potions & lotions. I’ve lived in Byron 30 years, I’m the poster girl of wellness🙋🏼‍♀️. And believe me, I very much went the complimentary medicine route for over a decade, before walking into a specialist office (I do both now). Can we accept sometimes things can’t be fixed? 🥰We don’t try & fix people who have a spinal injury & are wheelchair-based. We don’t fix people with Down Syndrome. We simply support these people. 🦢 ❤️ We live in a culture that it’s not okay, to be not okay. You need to be able-bodied, healthy, beautiful, stable, in a relationship, independent, working. But some people just can’t do that, myself included. (Though I’m pretty hot 🔥 LOL). What I’m saying is that there is a deeper peace that comes with a deeper acceptance🙏. Life is complex & never as we planned. Talk to anyone with long-term chronic pain & disability, & they will tell you that little things just don’t matter any more & you get your priorities right💜. So that’s the blessing 🌟even though it’s a total C*^t to live with.🦄 🤢OMG there is SO much more I could say about this guy. 🌈But I have to OWN IT too & say that I CHOSE these silly men. 🪱I am proud to say it has been 7 yrs since I STAYED in a silly relationship🦄. This guy was ages ago. 👑More cartoons to come! 👑Oh, so many more! 😘Swipe for cartoon details. Seriously. Fuck these guys. 🖕🏽 Jachai @jachaitea Bloom in all his Polaroid glory. X Hobart - Now!!!