Palookaville: Seth and the Art of Graphic Autobiography

Tom Smart

កញ្ញា 2016 · The Porcupine's Quill

អំពីសៀវភៅ​អេឡិចត្រូនិកនេះ

Palookaville, the graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Seth (Gregory Gallant), creates a dystopian reality that struggles with existential questions about the time, fate and identity. His bold, confident draughtsmanship depicts life in a bygone era and illustrates complex tales of the tragic consequences of living a static, inauthentic life.

In Palookaville: Seth and the Art of Graphic Autobiography, curator, critic and author Tom Smart examines the microscopic separation between Seth’s art and life, between his graphic fiction and the autobiographical elements that it contains. Smart’s analysis of the Palookaville story unfolds tantalizing clues into the artist’s construction of identity, but more, it reveals art’s ability to make sense of life, the passage of time, and perhaps even our own humanity.

 

អំពី​អ្នកនិពន្ធ

Author, art gallery director, curator, columnist and special advisor to art galleries and museums, Tom Smart is especially noted for his award-winning critical biographies, catalogues and monographs on Canadian artists, including Foreword IndieFab Silver winner Jack Chambers’ Red and Green. To date, Smart has written about painters Alex Colville, Christopher Pratt, Mary Pratt, Tom Forrestall, Miller Brittain and Fred Ross; graphic novelist George A. Walker; and sculptor John Hooper. Smart has worked in art galleries and museums across Canada and the United States, among them the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Frick in Pittsburgh, and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection where he was Executive Director from 2006–2010. Smart’s essay ‘The Wood Engravings of Rosemary Kilbourn’ was recently published in the Devil’s Artisan. His bi-weekly column ‘The Curator’ appears in the Saint John Telegraph-Journal.