-- Gavin Lees
Can you tell us a little bit about your background —
where you grew up and how you came to be an artist?
I grew up in
cold and old Edinburgh in Scotland, which is a fantastic place to feed the
imagination of any budding wee artists. The city has been built and built up so
that entire ancient streets are preserved underground. It is a city
full of ghosts and memories for me. I've always drawn and told stories as a
child (often acted out with little toys arranged around my room). I read
picture books when I was young but I only discovered comics when I grew up
enough to appreciate how amazing they were! This was surprisingly late —
I was 23 and had just finished a degree in Psychology and Sociology when I read
my first proper comic, Ghost World, and fell madly in love with the
medium.
Why did you decide on comics as your outlet?
I was blindly
in love with comics from the moment I laid eyes on them. The medium is still so
young and there are so many possibilities in discovering unexplored areas. You
can create whole worlds with nothing but pens and paper, you have complete
control over every element and, because stories can be created in solitude, it
is a medium that really can tap into the darkest corners of the creators’
minds.
It was the first comic I ever bought. I used
to steal The Beano from a boy buddy
of mine. I loved the Bash Street Kids, but those knobbly knees kind of freaked
me out. And I have a vague memory of once visiting 'Broon's World' — a
weird Scottish theme park that tries to turn the comic into Disney Land. Very
strange!
That was at the Glasgow Garden Festival in '88, and I was there, too!
It
seems like a very rare and fortunate transition you made from academia into
comics. How did you evolve as an artist? Had you always drawn, or
studied art in high school?
Yes — I studied art in high school and I continued to
draw all the way through Uni — often doodling all over my notes and
drawing smiley little neurons to help me make sense of mind-numbing
subjects like Psychopharmacology. But I only started doing narrative
stories after reading Ghost World. I
think being kept back from art school made me all the more raring to go... and
perhaps preserved some of my innocent love of making things without worrying
about the judgement of others!
It is set in
141 Rottin Road — a beautiful Victorian house converted into six, one-bed
apartments. On the outside the house is lovely but inside it (like each of us)
is slowly decaying. Electricity is failing, pipes are bursting and these
incidents force the lonely residents out of their little apartments and into
contact with one another. The residents pay homage to the great tradition
of weird and wonderful comic characters like the super villains of DC
or Marvel. There’s Barbara, the made-up make-up artist; Matt, a photographic
retoucher who can’t touch; Janet, the tormented dietician; Old Mrs Durbach — a
grandmother who literally blends into the background; the hedonistic Marion,
matriarch of the Midnight Feast Front and twenty-something Brian, a
'diseasophile' who is only attracted to women who are sick or dying.
It sounds
like my old flat in Glasgow! Was there any particular locale that you had
in mind when you conceptualised it? I'm probably not the first to note
the Rottenrow connection in the street name, but being from Edinburgh, I'm
guessing you weren't a Rottenrow baby.
Yes! The parallel wasn't intentional. It
was an imagined road but I guess the Victorian architecture is quite
Edinburgh-y, right?
You studied psychology and your mum was a
psychotherapist, does that have any influence on how you approach writing?
Absolutely.
The characters in my book are all very extreme symbols of Westerner's
anxieties with our bodies. Throughout the book we visit the characters during
formative moments in their past and childhoods and discover how they came to be
the people they are today. This is certainly a psychoanalytical idea,
but it was so embedded in my upbringing that I've come to accept it
as fact! Since I studied Sociology at university, the book was heavily
influenced by some of the corporal theories I read when I was there. If
academia if your cup of tea then I have a video that explains some of those
ideas here.
It's
interesting that you take such an active role in the analysis of your own work.
How far is that front-loaded when you're working on a comic? Do you
call upon theories and ideas that have interested you, or do you do further
research when you've found a theme you want to express?
Hm... I guess being over-analytical is very
much part of my character. I am always reading, watching films and soaking up
anything that interests me. But I try to forget it all once I have a theme in
place and just enjoy telling the story.
The characters in The House That Groaned are almost-impossibly bizarre, each with their own unique and often ironic quirk. In that respect the story reminded me of Sartre's short stories and plays, where we see the characters not so much as living people, but agents of fate. Are existentialism and fatalism ideas that interest you?
The 'fate' question is interesting and I
wonder if it stems from the house. Some of the readers have seen the house
as a kind of evil character or a 'haunted house'. I never intended this to be
the case. It was simply supposed to be a normal body- ticking and clicking
along and inevitably screwing up as it slowly decays. It's interesting that
some people interpret this as 'evil' rather than 'normal'. The characters are
swept up with this physical inevitability, so that, I guess, is fatalism. But
my influences are less philosophical and more sociological, psychoanalytical...
and occasionally spiritual. Though I should probably not draw boundaries
between disciplines that ultimately overlap — art is always
simply an attempt to make sense of human life in all its complexities.
How much of you is there in the novel's characters? I know you were quite a sickly child when you were growing up, which you've said fed into Brian's diseasophilia. Is the tension between Marion and Janet part of your own neuroses?
Interesting question. Yes — I was very ill as
a child and used Brian to explore a subject that terrifies me. I have
had a catalogue of strange illnesses that I dumped on to many of
Brian's girlfriends. By flipping it round so that he embraced these illnesses,
was an attempt at reconciling myself with the reality
of diseased and dying bodies and my own mortality. As for Marion and
Janet — I imagined them as two characters that often jostle for
control and freedom within (in particular) woman's bodies — particularly when
eating and dieting is concerned. I am very aware of the huge social pressure on
most women in this respect.
That is very
well observed and certainly true! I love structure. My mind is overloaded with
manic ideas, songs, chattering voices and repeated thoughts and requires a lot
of discipline! I like to start thinking about ideas by creating boundaries to
play within. The House That Groaned
has a lot of structure- the division of the building into six one bedroom
apartments, the panels and frames that box the characters in, or from which
they break free etc. There is one point near the end of the book when the
'structure' of the frames falls away completely and the story continues without
panels.
Do
you feel you need that rigorous structure in your writing? I know for
some writers — especially young writers — this can be a crutch in helping find
their voice, while for others it's a deliberate stylistic choice (Chris Ware is
probably the best example of this). Would you ever feel comfortable doing
a work that's more freeform and loose?
Ha ha. I am, on one hand, very structured,
but equally I can be very uninhibited (as some of the more explicit scenes in
the book will testify to). Perhaps I have a little creative Janet and
Marion inside my head jostling for structure and theory vs freedom
and impulsiveness!
Some of your comics actually transcends the print medium,
and you've worked with sculpture, models and, erm, cakes. What are you
trying to achieve through these experiments?
Yes — on the
subject of structure and boundaries I also like to play with the definition of
comics as 'sequential art'. In my mind comics can be any kind of narrative (plays,
prose, poetry) and any kind of art (paint, sculpture, mosaic). As long as
you're choosing specific moments in time shown in sequence to create a
narrative or convey information. I guess it takes us back to some of the
historical comics- like the Bayeux Tapestry or Trajan's Collum. I create comics
in sculpture form, jewellery boxes and Doll's Houses. I collaborate with
digital wizard Jonathan Plackett to make comics for the iPad and iPhone and
with my aunt, super-crafter Denny Fransman to make stained glass and quilt
comics. As for the cake; I don't think my (rather gruesome) 'surgery cake'
was a 'comic' as it's not a sequenced narrative... but imagine making a comic
cake you could eat in sequence! I'll get on it!
Are you looking to any influences outside of cartooning
when you're working on these three-dimensional pieces?
I usually
start with the space whether it is a dolls house or an iPad and use
the specific features of the medium to create an appropriate story to fit
inside. For example you peer through the windows of the dolls’ house to 'read'
the scenes sculptured inside so I created a story about voyeurism and
femininity. I am influenced by loads of comic creators, artists, film makers
and writers who sit on the boundaries of art and storytelling. I love
US indie comic artist Eleanor Davis, Paula Rego, Kit Williams and Maurice
Sendak. Since making these comic experiments I have come across some other
comic artists who are exploring 3D- Argentinian comic artists Carlos Nine for
example or Chris Ware with his cut-out-and-build houses in Jimmy Corrigan.
Obviously
there are aesthetic advantages of digital comics — being able to incorporate
animation, sound and interactivity — but do you see there being any thematic or
artistic benefits of the medium?
Would 'interactivity' count as an 'aesthetic'
or 'thematic' benefit? Interactivity is certainly the biggest driving force
behind my interest in digital. Finding new ways to immerse and involve the
reader in an imaginary world that lets them play along, too.
Your early comics work was published by The Times and The
Guardian newspapers, which is a very
impressive feat for a young cartoonist. What led you to work on those
projects?
Lots
of persistence! I was very much part of the UK's underground comic scene
for years but wanted to make comics for a living. I got myself the 'Writers and
Artist's Yearbook' and started sending comic strips and stories to all and
sundry and was lucky enough to be picked up by The Guardian which led to my
graphic story in The Times. There is so many talented folk in the
comic world and success with editors and publishers boils down to
an entrepreneurial spirit in getting your comics out there and an understanding
of the market.
I am hugely
invested in the UK comics scene (in fact I just did a
comic article about it here for Time Out). Although it's teeny tiny
in comparison to the US, France and Japan there is an amazing amount of energy
and talent. It's funny because the term 'literary' is a great compliment for
the mainstream publishing and newspaper world, but a bit of a dirty word on the
mainstream comic scene. My book's gotten some great reviews in The
Guardian, The Observer and is due to be reviewed in the Times
Literary Supplement this month, which is great if it's attracting new fans to
the medium and growing the readership in the UK. That said, I'll always be a
comic girl at heart and I'd like to keep true to all that makes comics such a
brilliant medium — its accessibility, playfulness and lack of
pretentiousness.
It's
strange how the word "mainstream" is incredibly conflicted within
comics. We often refer to the "mainstream" as Marvel and DC
superheroes, while the real mainstream in publishing is more concerned with the
likes of Charles Burns and Dan Clowes. Are you still keen to keep that
distinction between your comics and prose literature?
Yes — I agree that "mainstream" is
a conflicted term. I'm not too bothered how people categorise my
work- as long as it engages them. However I am aware of the added responsibility
for British creators to do their bit to grow our tiny market and bring comics
to more people like the US, Europe or Japan have done so successfully.
With the critical acclaim that The House That Groaned has been garnering, has that opened up new opportunities for future
projects?
Having spent a
year and a half working on one book, I am keen to do some shorter stories over
the next year before tackling my next book. I will be creating a
12-page story on a comic residency in April in Belgium — a country that really
respects their comics and produces buckets of amazing artists as a result! Then
I'm off to exhibit some of my comics at the Moscow Comic Festival in May. I'm
also working on some more digital comics with Jonathan Plackett and have some
interesting newspaper comic projects in the pipeline.
0 comments:
Post a Comment