Wes Mountain’s fearless political cartoons will make you laugh and then wince, the way they should

On the night of the 2019 Australian federal election, political cartoonist Wesley Mountain had done the linework of four cartoons: two for Labor and two for the Coalition. Betting on a Labor win, a bet backed by the polls, Wes spent election night colouring in his work, preparing for a change in government.

At 7pm, it started to become clear Australia was set for a shock election win by the Liberal party. So Wes set aside his evening’s work on Labor and geared himself up to complete two colourless cartoons: one on Liberal’s policy outlook and one on the win itself.

As the multimedia editor of the news analysis website The Conversation, Wes is no stranger to drawing to a strict deadline.

Wes was one of the last people left in the office when I wandered into The Conversation newsroom. This is not irregular, I sit a few desks away from him in the open plan office and know him to be extremely hardworking in the least arrogant way you can imagine.

Predominantly publishing political cartoons, comics and infographics for The Conversation, Wes has an ethical conscience that colours his work.

Wes made us both a tea before we took a seat in the lounge area of the newsroom. We started chatting about how his love of cartoons began when he was four years old. He threw himself into political cartooning in his 20s.

I find myself imagining a child with Wes’ distinctive beard and glasses doodling Prime Minister Scott Morrison on an Etch A Sketch.

Now able to draw the Prime Minister without a reference image, Wes explained how long it took for the curves and edges of the Liberal leader to be ingrained in his mind.

“The weird thing about ScoMo is that he’s been around for a long time and we forget that. It’s strange how different he looks in some of the old cartoons. He’s much more bulbous now, he’s all cheeks and round nose,” he says.

“Over the election period I took to drawing him with a cap on because that was his thing. I’d always write something different in the cap and I don’t think anyone ever noticed, but it made me laugh.”

These Easter eggs can be spotted in a lot of his work. In fact, he has a group of political-fiend Facebook friends who keep their eyes peeled for bonus goodies in his cartoons.

“But they’re mostly for me because no one’s ever going to look at them long enough,” he says.

A cartoon for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).

An interesting paradox, Wes told me, is political cartoonists are generally removed from a story but need to be across everything. He uses Twitter as a tool to measure what is getting the public riled up and to determine gaps in the narrative.

“I feel like being on Twitter can be really helpful a lot of the time because you see people ripping on stuff and you see what’s getting people pissed off. You can also see what people are missing.”

So what’s the purpose of political cartoons anyway?

Wes considers their larrikin nature important to bring high and mighty figures down to the average joe’s level. But serious, kick-in-the-gut cartoons can encourage an audience to re-evaluate a subject they have been over exposed to, or feel distanced from, like climate change.

“Political cartoons can be a good laugh, and most of the time it should be funny, but I think the most powerful ones are the ones that make people wince a little bit.”

That’s not to say he limits himself to cartooning and comics. His Darling print is one example of his personal work where he can flex his creative muscles outside of work.

“I just had this idea of wanting to do something in that 70’s colour scheme then I immediately had this idea of pot plants in a 70’s office, but also grotesque cigarette smoke and smell and nicotine stains. Then it all just fell together,” he says.

To express long form ideas, Wes is more drawn to comics. But he says these can be an incredibly time intensive way to convey subject matter.

“Cartoons and comics are like film. You put hours of work into it but the audience consumes it in two minutes. You buy a novel and it’s going to last you maybe weeks. You buy a graphic novel, it's probably going to last you at best two or three days.”

He tells me he feels lucky to work in a role he’s aspired to most of his life. After studying visual arts and literature (areas he jokingly refers to as “very marketable”), he pursued a journalism masters degree. Though he wouldn’t take it back, he says he feels like art school broke him.

“I feel like you can become obsessed with everything needing to be conceptual or to have to have some kind of deeper exploration. I think that’s why I default to doing political cartoons and comics because there’s a straight line and a purpose,” he says.

When I ask Wes whether he thinks political cartooning can be impartial, he referenced a time, earlier in his career, when he was featured in Australian journalist Greg Jericho’s book about the fifth estate. The book focused on how political coverage on social media and blogs affect politics more broadly.

“He noted me as centrist and at the time I was like ‘yeah!’ because that meant I was punching both sides,” Wes says.

While Wes takes an objective approach to his political drawings, and believes a willingness to take the piss out of all parties is necessary, he also says there’s a place a cartoonist should draw the line in their linework.

“Ultimately, just like good journalism, you come to a point where you go ‘well yeah, but it’s wrong that our government treats people like this’.”

It’s important he tackles issues with a sense of who his audience is, and he referenced a comic explainer he produced for The Conversation on lone-actor terrorism. This is when one person, not associated with any groups, commits an act of terror. It’s controversial to explain such serious subject matter in a typically lighthearted format, and Wes described it as a “labour of love”.

A panel from his comic explainer on lone actor terrorism in The Conversation.

“It was a subject that’s really hard to tackle and nobody came after us afterwards and said you were insensitive in the way that you drew people. That felt like a really big win for me. Nobody was like ‘oh, you’re making light of it’.”

Wes takes a sensitive approach to the work he produces, considering what potential implications could arise from the way he represents a moment.

“If I’m going to do a crowd scene, not everyone’s going to have the same skin colour,” he says.

“And it’s really fun to do big rolls of fat and all that stuff, but I try and not make a caricature of someone about that.”

In my time knowing Wes I have noticed he rarely shies away from speaking about divisive issues, but when he does, compassion and self-awareness remain etched to every word he says. This translates to his work.

A friend who also works in the media recently told him his “humanity” always shines through in his cartoons.

“It may play against me because people aren’t necessarily looking for humanity in political cartoons, but I really care about that stuff. I think if you don’t, you risk becoming someone like Mark Knight or Bill Leak,” he says.

Knight infamously published a controversial cartoon of tennis star Serena Williams, while Leak depicted a neglectful Aboriginal father in a political cartoon for The Australian. Both cartoons were widely called out as being racist.

“You see older cartoonists in particular who are there to ‘make the joke’, taking the ‘everyone should be able to be criticised’ approach. That’s totally true, but they start to see freedom of speech as the point rather than the thing that allows you to make good observations. I think about that stuff a lot.”

Tessa Ogle is a writer from Melbourne, a caffeine addict and is partial to a pun or two.