It’s all about

My name’s *Ryl Mandus and I’m a working artist living in the Pacific Northwest. The benign weirdness that is my life continues unabated — in my feeble attempts to understand, I explore ‘it’ mainly through drawing and painting, and stray bits of writing when I’m feeling sufficiently coherent.

Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine,…

… more later, when I’m feeling sufficiently coherent.

Whether it’s words or art, if I take too long between posts — like, anything more than a couple of months — ping me. Seriously, you’ll be doing me a favor.

Thanks,

- Ryl

* “Ryl”? Seriously, now! Is that really your name?

Yep, that’s my name; and no, I didn’t make it up. It’s short for ‘Cheryl’ [but don't bother calling me that because I won't answer -- consider yourself duly advised].

‘Cheryl’ is a name I’ve never liked having [due to personal history], and one day I got sick of my name always being mangled, misremembered, mispronounced, and misplaced. That’s when I realized I was in need of a name less easy to forget, a name that doesn’t tax the mentally lazy,… a sound that doesn’t make me cringe whenever I hear it in reference to myself.

The easiest solution was to use a variant or an abbreviation — however [there's always a 'however', isn't there?], ‘Che’ has connotations that just do not suit me, and ‘Cher’ was already taken.

Golly. What’s a girl to do?

Well, I truncated the six-lettered noise by lopping off its first half, and kept only the half of it that I Actually Like And Can Live With.

- Ryl [rhymes with 'thrill']