It started with an eye, drawn in ink. 

Pen to paper, no sketches beforehand, moving from one mark to the next to see what would appear. 

They began over five years ago as a break from my larger oil paintings. But these drawings coalesced into something more, a growing body of work that has developed its own interconnected narratives and mythology .   

The Townsfolk is a collaboration of drawing and writing, with my drawings and paintings serving as the nexus for a web of writing by local authors.  Everything is connected, as characters weave in and out of each other’s tales in varying styles and tones and forms of writing.  Each story is centred on an individual character, which provides a specifically-faceted view of the Town.  This is why no two stories treat the Town exactly alike, and details (and structure, and tone, and more) may shift from one author to the next, and one story to the next.  Characters who arise in written form may later find themselves illustrated, only to have a new story written about them down the road.  We create like the ouroboros.

The Townsfolk are each a surprising combination of friendly and fearsome, handsome and hideous, funny and unfathomable. The characters’ individual quirks invite the viewer to look closely and then imagine these folks’ strange stories.  

Meet The Townsfolk