As part of our new series, the illustrated city , artist Liana Finck explains why she thinks urban living makes people so angry – and how drawing on the subway gave her her trademark style

The anxious art of Liana Finck: 'People who don't live in cities think I'm being so mean'

Human beings: can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Nowhere is this truer than in cities where, increasingly, we live on top of each other in ever-denser spaces; and no one captures the resultant moments of friction better than Liana Finck. The New Yorker cartoonist has accumulated a loyal following for her line drawings conveying – in unpretentious, quivering pen strokes – all the micro-aggressions and anxieties that navigating a city provokes.

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In fact, she says by phone from New York, her trademark style – that can just as effectively convey apprehension or bristling anger – is derived from drawing on the subway. “That’s where my signature wiggly lines come from. A subway helps me not fake them.”

While her new graphic memoir, Passing for Human, centres on family, the single panel vignettes she posts on Instagram reflect her observations of urban life and how its etiquette is breached or upheld. “I think it inspires my Instagram drawings because I use those mostly to figure out things that are bothering me and make sense of them. I know that every city must have a different flavour of micro-aggression, but I have a feeling that New York must be worse than others.”

Every city must have a different flavour of micro-aggression, but I have a feeling that New York must be worse than others

Finck’s keen observation of human behaviour reflects acute awareness – to the point of self-consciousness – of her own. She regularly draws in cafes, not out of necessity but because the quiet of her studio is not conducive to work. It is clearly a rich seam of complicated feelings for her. “I feel a lot of shame about it, I don’t know why. I feel like it’s rude to spend longer than a couple of hours in a cafe. I feel bad when baristas start recognising me, like some weird eccentric.

“The point is to get your coffee, give them your business, and then get out and let someone else buy something. I hate when there’s not enough tables and there’s people quietly fighting for them.”

Many of the misbehaviours (she calls them “micro-unkindnesses”) that catch her attention are fleeting and, some might say, inconsequential – like someone intruding on your space in a packed elevator or the “pedestrian rage” directed at slow walkers. Somewhat ironically, it’s those drawings that draw the most negative response on Instagram. “People who don’t live in cities think I’m being so mean,” she says.

“I guess it’s the same thing they don’t like in Larry David – like, ‘why am I being so needlessly mean spirited’? It seems like I’m nitpicking, like I’m choosing this tiny thing that annoys me and blowing this thing out of proportion instead of seeing the bigger picture.”

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But Finck frames it as “noticing how civilisation works” – moments when the urban fabric is momentarily pulled taut. If you do not pay these trivial transgressions any mind, it may be because city living fosters – maybe demands – a certain obliviousness, a thicker skin. But not everyone develops it.

“Sometimes I feel like a person who notices these things in a world of blind people who don’t,” says Finck, the sound of car horns faintly audible in the background. “We’re just putting away our bodies, packing them in the most efficient way possible, while our minds can go anywhere.”

If you’re an illustrator or graphic artist with an idea for the illustrated city series, email us at cities@theguardian.com

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