Bio

Beau Yoesel, also known as Fest or Festidae, is an artist and illustrator currently based in Nebraska. They graduated with a BFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in Spring 2023. They make art in every medium, though they most enjoy drawing with ink and watercolor pencils and creating woodblock prints. They are interested in making comics and graphic novels, as well as creating standalone works. Their goal is to create works that express their day-to-day life as a queer disabled person.

Statement

I am, at my core, a storyteller. My work consists of ink illustrations and watercolor pencil paintings; I work both with realistic still lives and with character-based work, much of which is in the form of comics and graphic novels, and in all of my art, no matter what kind of specific medium or project it is, I like to connect it to myself. I take inspiration from my identity and personal life, as well as the world around me—everything and everyone I see makes me think of a new story I could create through my art.

Most importantly, I want to make art for people who are different, people who are other. My characters are queer, disabled, and otherwise not “normal” by conventional standards; while these things are sometimes relevant to the plot, and at times can set my characters apart from others in their world, I still want them to be a normalized experience. I want people who are like me to see my work and feel seen, and for people who aren’t like me, who are “normal,” to see my work and realize that their experience of the world is not the only experience that matters—and perhaps not even the most common. At its core, my goal with my art is one: to create worlds that feel fleshed out and like part of a greater whole, and two: to make people reconsider the way they view the world and look at things from a new angle (whether literally or metaphorically).