Slow Agony

"That turning point in my life, from city rat to field rat, was a new source of inspiration. Wild and domestic animals, clearing a terrain exposed to the vagaries of a merciless nature, facing a voracious ocean, among men transformed by alcohol into killers and arsonists. I always say you have to give destiny a destination, "says Tomi Ungerer.
Tomi Ungerer's New York period, from 1957 to 1971, had been dominated by his exceptional graphic production in fields as varied as children's books, social and political satire and advertising. When he decided to go to Lockeport, on a peninsula in Nova Scotia, he suddenly broke free from a world he had grown tired of, moving with his wife to an abandoned farm. Their new way of life, centred around cattle breeding, enabled Tomi to practice observational drawing.
Slow Agony, published in 1983 in landscape format, features drawings of houses, factories and cars, with quotations in English from the Bible and Baptist or country songs. The book was very badly received at the time of its publication because it looks at the desertification of small towns and the poverty of a region, its images like allegorical figures of death. His technique had also changed; starting from his own photographs he produced hyperrealistic drawing in which complex compositions use white undrawn areas on the paper. These drawings show links with certain American artistic movements such as super-realism/photorealism and with the work of the American painter Edward Hopper.