Robin Sathoff
Xenophilia (the love of things foreign or different), was created with a ballpoint pen as the artist backpacked through England, India, Kashmir, and Nepal. While the images reflect the places in which they were drawn, the trip itself was my chance to either live or die. I was a seminary drop out working as a psych tech on a mental health unit. Life proceeded in its normal fashion until my family was involved in a serious motor vehicle accident. My father was killed on the scene and mom was paralyzed from the chest down. My world was turned upside down. When mom got out of rehab I told her I would give her a year to look after her at home and assist her with transition to life in a wheelchair. I had no idea what I was getting into. Mom required complete care, there were household tasks, and I felt overrun. By the end of the year I had gotten fat, depressed, and was in dire need for some personal time. Mom said that she would buy me a plane ticket to anywhere. A buddy of mine said 'you can go anywhere, why don’t you go to India or something?' So I did. I left my small town in Iowa for what would become the journey of a lifetime. On the first leg of the trip I sought refuge at an old friend’s place up in the West Midlands, U.K. It was there that Xenophilia was conceived. Over the course of the next ten months I drew my way through the Himalayas in Kashmir and northern India, where I saw the Dalai Lama: the deserts of Rajasthan in the west; through the white sands of Ohm Beach to the rocks of Hampi; all the way south to Pondicherry; then finally north again to Varanasi, where the sacred Ganga flows. The last leg of the trip found me crossing over to Nepal. I enjoyed drawing in the serene setting of Pokhara, as I stayed in a guest house on the lake surrounded by snowcapped mountains. From there I lived under martial law for a month in Kathmandu after the royal family was assassinated. I was finally able to catch a flight back to the States. From New York I rode
