'80s Unicorns by Sue Dawe and Andy Mack

I fell down a real rabbit hole recently. It started when a good friend of mine who loves horses and knows I love sci-fi art sent me a link to a post from heckyeahponyscans featuring four postcards of delightfully glowing '80s unicorns against backdrops of outer space.

Well, most of them were outer space; One of them was a pink forest.

The post just had this caption by way of explanation: "My childhood (1980s) unicorn postcard collection. I believe these were all by the same artist, Andy Mack / Aardvark Art."

That post led another tumblr user to realize that the same Andy Mack was the artist behind a 1985 poster of a unicorn being trapped by Stonehedge crystals, which they'd been trying to track down for decades:

"OH MY GODS!!!!!!!! That's the artist! I looked him up and I FOUND THE POSTER! I've been looking for this for DECADES! My mom destroyed it in like 1992, and I could never even find anything *about* it! I've searched for it every few years forever, but without an artist name I never found anything, just completely unrelated pictures.

Here it is! I feel like I'm going to cry! I've found it!"

The poster:

This then led another user to reveal a few majestic early '80s posters by a different artist, Sue Dawe.

I started looking up more Dawe artworks myself. This next one has an interesting backstory in this quote attributed to Dawe herself:

"Back in '82 I was interviewed by one of my artist-heroes, Harrison Ellenshaw, to work on the original 'Tron' movie. What they required could be accomplished by any airbrush artist with a modicum of skill, and not being in the Animation Union, I was fairly certain that I would not get the job. I went home, and said to myself 'I can paint a grid!' Inspired by a billboard featuring the Budweiser stallion, Baron, I created 'Up From the Grid'. I have ridden a Clydesdale at a good canter, and can feel the thunder of this horse's hooves across the grid."

It's certainly a heady sub-genre of postcards and bedroom posters. It reminds me of the equally sharply defined genre of 90s tropical dolphin posters.

I typed the above paragraph moments before looking up Sue Dawe to find out not only that she's still a working commercial artist with an official Facebook page, but she even posted this dolphin-centric one in 2022:

Her website has some more info about her work: For seven years, she painted covers for the Mead Corporation's back-to-school materials. She doesn't give the dates, but it seems to have been across the early '90s (perhaps starting in the very late '80s).

She also has a line of shirts and sweatshirts with Vapor95, which is awesome to see – so many of the artists I feature on this art blog deserve their own retro clothing lines!

Here are a few more older pieces from her that I found online.

This 1986 one with a zebra unicorn is called "Hanging Out in Horton Plaza," a reference to the colorfully designed San Diego shopping mall that had opened a year earlier.

This blog post discusses Sue Dawe's work within the context of a cultural focus on "bold colors, playful designs, and imaginative themes, driven in part by the rise of neon fashion, animated television shows, and fantasy films" from the 1970s through the 1990s.

The more famous artist in this area is Lisa Frank, but I prefer Dawe's focus on mythical creatures and just-slightly more grounded style. Dawe's art certainly isn't realistic, but it can seem like it is, when contrasted against Frank's suger-rush, rainbow-blasted approach. Dawe's work retains a moody atmosphere.

As that blogger puts it: "Sue Dawe's works were one step closer to a different type of dream to me, and Lisa Frank felt more like a universe of cartoon characters I knew."

Andy Mack might be a mystery for another day: Tracking down information on the artist or decent scans of Mack's art is a little more difficult than it was for Sue Dawe.

I wrap this post up with a few photos of Mack's '80s unicorn art that I found on Facebook, Etsy, and Ebay – the artist doesn't appear to have any website or online profiles at all.

Cool Links

How Kolchak: The Night Stalker Influenced Final Fantasy - Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games

I love hearing about genre fiction influences, and this blog post is nothing but. Kolchak: The Night Stalker was a big influence on The X Files and Buffy, but it also inspired a D&D monster design that then inspired a FF monster. This whole blog is pretty cool – here's a post about how Popeye is (indirectly) responsible for both Mario and the concept of power-ups.

Here’s Why I Should Be Allowed to Make Another Sleuth Movie - Unwinnable

Maddi Chilton pitches a take on the (inevitable?) next remake of the 1972 and 2007 Sleuth movies. I remember really liking the 1972 version in particular. It's within the small subset of 70s/80s witty, twisty mystery-thrillers that everyone who loves the Knives Out movies should watch. In fact, this is unrelated to the article, but I'll let you in on my full list of this type of movie:

• The Silent Partner, 1978
• Deathtrap, 1982
• The Last of Sheila, 1973
• Charley Varrick, 1973
• Sleuth, 1972

Honorable mentions go to Noises Off (witty and twisty, but not a mystery), Evil Under the Sun (witty and a mystery, but not super twisty), and Clue/Murder by Death (silly but not witty – I cannot sanction the buffoonery).

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Music rec: This Nordic electropop album, Slør, by Eivør

Next Time: Robert Tinney