“I Just Kept Drawing”: Rand Carlson’s Life in Color
From daily deadlines to mountain mornings, a longtime cartoonist finds his rhythm in Cloudcroft.
Rand Carlson’s voice catches when he remembers one morning in the late 1980s. His father had opened the San Jose Mercury News, turned to the comics page, and found his son’s work staring back at him.
“He got on the phone and said, ‘Son, you’re in the paper,’” Carlson recalls. “It was a gift, a real thrill.”
That moment—seeing his work in “The New Breed,” a King Features Syndicate strip created to fill the void left by Gary Larson’s retirement from “The Far Side”—represented hard work and passion.
Today, whether at his studio in Tucson or at his restored 1920s cabin in Cloudcroft, Carlson continues that creative journey, painting prolifically.
“Cloudcroft is such a wonderful spot to be in because it’s so beautiful.”
The Art of Cartoons
“We’re all artists when we’re young. I just kept drawing,” he explains. “That was the way that I could express myself.”
Carlson kept drawing through every phase of his life. He was the cartoonist for his high school newspaper. In 1966, still a teenager, he had a comic strip called “The Crate Society” published in the Cupertino Courier—a parody of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society that mocked the cookie-cutter houses spreading across Santa Clara Valley.
He became the first political cartoonist at the University of Arizona’s student newspaper, then editorial cartoonist and graphics editor at the El Paso Herald Post in the early 1980s.
One perk of the job: meeting his heroes. Charles Shultz, Bill Keane, and the creator of Marmaduke.
Carlson drew for the Tucson Weekly for 35 years—”roughly 50 cartoons a year times 35 years. So that’s around 1500 strips. That’s a lot of cartoons.”
Marking the Moment
“When people think of cartoons, they think of a joke, a punchline, something funny,” he says. “And with editorial cartooning, there’s a lot of sadness and a lot of danger. There’s a lot of things going on in the news that are not funny.”
He remembers drawing a cartoon when Anwar Sadat was assassinated. “I had the Sphinx crying.”
“One of the things I love about cartooning in general is that it brings an issue to the fore. It gives you a symbol or an image to look at when something happens. It helps you to mark the moment.”
”I worked for 35 years to try to raise the consciousness of people, the awareness of people. I hope I made people think about things.”
“I think a cartoon is something that everybody looks at. It only takes you a few seconds to get through a cartoon. Cartoons are such a wonderful way to deliver a message to somebody.”
From Philosophy to Digital and Fine Arts
Carlson majored in philosophy at the University of Arizona, with a minor in architecture. His favorite joke: “To get the philosophy major off your porch, you pay for the pizza.”
He ran Random Arts, his graphic design and illustration business, for years. When he saw computers coming in the late 1980s, he started taking Photoshop and digital illustration classes.
“Now I have four computers.”
By the 1990s, he was illustrating for alternative newsweeklies across the United States, winning Arizona Press Club awards. Then came an abrupt pivot.
“I’d been working cyber for so long. I’d been working where I would do drawings and I’d scan them and I’d colorize them and I’d ship them around the country,” he explains. “And I wanted to work with my hands and I wanted to make something—an object. So I looked into tin collage.”
He started finding old cookie tins in thrift stores, cutting them apart, assembling them on wood panels. “It really caught fire. There was a time when I was in nine galleries across the United States—Oregon, North Carolina, Georgia, California, four galleries in Arizona.”
Then COVID hit. “Everything collapsed and I just decided that the inventory and just keeping up with it was just too much of a job. So I stopped doing it in 2020. And I was able to return to my first love, painting. And now I’m painting almost every day now.”
Finding Cloudcroft
Carlson first discovered Cloudcroft in the early 1980s while working in El Paso.
Coming from Northern California’s mountains and oceans, he sought out high country. People told him: ‘Go to Cloudcroft.’
“So I did and I just loved it. That’s where I would go to hike and to experience the mountain life.”
Decades later, he found a house built in the “late 1920s or early 1930s” by the Kemp family from El Paso, just down from the Lodge.
“It was in bad shape but I saw it had good bones as far as I was concerned.” He bought it and began a long restoration. “But I didn’t change the outside of the building at all. I kept it the same as it was.”
“I can be in my bedroom and look out the window and see White Sands National Park through the trees, which is just incredibly wonderful. And the sunsets are marvelous. So it’s location, location, location.”
A Voice for Community
Carlson has watched journalism change over his career.
“I am concerned that journalism has sort of lost its muscle in terms of informing the public, which is I think dangerous.”
“The newspaper used to be a teacher, an educator. And that’s how people find out about the water or the forest situation or paving the streets or anything else—through the newspaper. Because Cloudcroft news doesn’t make it to the television, you know. So the internet and newspapers are the education.”
He’s thrilled to be part of it. “I’m so happy that the people of Cloudcroft and the area have something to hold in their hands and look at. It’s a rare thing.”
It’s a modest role for someone whose work has been syndicated internationally, who’s sat beside Pulitzer Prize winners, whose father once opened the morning paper and saw his son on the comics page.
He says with a laugh, “I’m the best cartoonist in Cloudcroft. I’m also the only cartoonist.”
Find Carlson’s work online at RandCarlson.com. His cartoon, “Switchbacks,” and Maps of Cloudcroft appear in the Mountain Monthly. This interview originally appeared in the January 2026 Monthly.
Cloudcroft Reader is proud to be sponsored in part by great companies like:
Noisy Water Winery
Family-owned winery crafting thoughtfully made wines from New Mexico grapes, inspired by mountain living.Be in the Mountains Yoga & Massage
A cozy space for yoga and massage therapy at the Village PlazaOsha Trail Depot
Your destination for unique, hand-crafted treasuresJohn R. Battle, CPA, CVA, MAFF, CMAA
Personal & Business Taxes, Tax Planning & ConsultingThe Stove and Spa Store
We offer a variety of services to ensure your hearth and spa dreams are met!The Lodge at Cloudcroft
Landmark Choice Among New Mexico ResortsSacramento Camp & Conference Center
Come to the Mountain — Let God Refresh Your SoulLaughing Leaf Dispensary
Discover a world of wellness at Laughing LeafInstant Karma
Adventure Within: Transformative Yoga, Ayurvedic Wisdom, Nourishing Organics, Fair Trade BoutiqueOff the Beaten Path
Eclectic gifts & original artworkFuture Real Estate
Raise your expectations.Ski Cloudcroft
The Southern southernmost in New MexicoCloudcroft Therapeutic Massage
Maximizing Movement, Quality of Life ImprovementHigh Altitude
Your favorite little outdoor outfitter on Burro AvenueBlushing Yucca Esthetics
✨ Book your glow-up today✨The Elk Shed
Purveyors of Southwest Mountain Goods & FineryThe PAC
Pickleball Addicts of Cloudcroft—Pickleball in the CloudsPeñasco Valley Telephone Cooperative
For all the ways you love to connectBre Hope Media
Professional photo and video services
Advertise in Mountain Monthly and Cloudcroft Reader for total market coverage.
Cloudcroft Reader serves more than 3,200 active email subscribers and more than 14,000 social media followers. With the Mountain Monthly, widely available across the village for free, circulation is higher than ever, and the Monthly informs more than 4,000 followers on Facebook.
Together, our platforms provide comprehensive market coverage: locals, seasonal residents, and visitors who want to stay informed about the Cloudcroft community.
Reach the people engaged with Cloudcroft — locals, seasonals, and visitors. Let us help you reach your best customer prospects with your compelling message. What are you waiting for?