Gaynes's first dive into visual pictorials began upon receiving a fellowship to teach college in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta for two years between 2013-2015. During her first weeks living in Indonesia, she began sketching in response to prompts from the book Drawing on the Right side of the Brain. In addition to teaching Gaynes to communicate with images, the process of illustrating helped her see shape and shadow where they had previously been invisible.

 

While Gaynes primarily identifies herself as a writer, she explores the powers of mixed-media storytelling to try and help narrators in her cultural research travel across time and space. She is interested in how the craft of narrativizing human struggle, both monumental and mundane, can help people otherwise divided feel part of a shared visceral experience.