Cathy Wilcox is finishing his career as a cartoonist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The agepart of a broader stretch of layoffs in the journalistic group.
It has been gratifying to see the high level of support and well wishes that the announcement of his retirement has provoked.
In addition to a final week of cartoons that made explicit his feelings on several important issues, he had a few words to say on the way out about the invasion of AI in the profession.
Here is a sample of his work:
UPDATE
Now it’s official. On August 31, 2026, Australian editorial cartoonist Cathy Wilcox, a member of Cartooning for Peace, announced that she would be leaving the Sydney Morning Herald and The age after decades of collaboration.
How did it come to this?
A cartoon published on January 7, 2026 in the Sydney Morning Herald and The ageled to her being ridiculed in Australia, in a case that raises concerns about the space still allocated to freedom of expression in an increasingly polarized and violent world.
In recent months, Cathy Wilcox has had to navigate the murky waters of polarized political debate and the instrumentalization of accusations of anti-Semitism, a phenomenon whose growing danger to the profession has been highlighted in our latest report on the situation of cartoonists under threat around the world.
In this context, criticizing the excesses of the State of Israel and its political leaders has become a high-risk task, while media outlets that fully assume their editorial responsibility in the face of controversy by publishing a cartoon are increasingly rare.
Cartooning for Peace salutes the professionalism and integrity of Cathy Wilcox, a talented editorial cartoonist who walks away with her head held high and will continue to represent the world as she sees it.
