THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2024! Tim Bird has always been one of the medium’s finest practitioners when it comes to investigating that particular metaphorical crossroads where individual, memory, environment and time intersect. But in his latest, and undoubtedly most personal, book to date he expands upon those explorations in a quietly powerful piece of graphic memoir. Adrift on a Painted Sea deals with existential themes that are universal – the loss of a parent and the experience of bereavement – but does so with a unique added factor. In these pages Bird juxtaposes the story of his mother alongside a showcase of her own unrecognised work as an artist in what is undoubtedly one of the standout non-fiction comics works of 2024.
Adrift on a Painted Sea merges graphic biography and memoir. It’s a celebration of Sue Bird’s life but also an account of it as seen through the eyes of Tim Bird, from his childhood to her final hours when she succumbed to cancer. We follow Sue from her early years through university, career paths, and a return to her love of landscape painting. On the way we also see how Tim and his sister interacted with the parental creativity that surrounded them, and how Sue’s paintings captured not just the moments in time that she was observing but also key points in the family’s own group history.
In a series of reflections on their relationship Bird’s sequential art and/or his narration are placed against the backdrop of Sue’s work. There’s a parallel achievement here as we are brought into her world through both the lens of her landscape art and Tim’s own memories and meditations. It’s a remarkable storytelling technique; the emotional immediacy of Tim’s stripped back cartooning sometimes dancing across the rich realism of Sue’s paintwork, giving personal context like family holidays to the scenes they depict. Occasional use of personal artefacts (letters, sketches, book covers, photos and exhibition catalogues) also expands on this idea of different levels of interpretive interaction with the page.
It is also worth noting that given the timeframe in which it was created Adrift on a Painted Sea also acts as a record of aspects of those pandemic years, particularly in those latter hospital sequences where the pain of impending loss is exacerbated by Covid restrictions and social distancing protocols. Ending on a beautiful moment of visual metaphor this is a book that is all the more effective for the subtlety and the nuance of its approach. Those in Harrogate for Thought Bubble will also be able to visit the related exhibition opening on the Friday night.
Tim Bird (W), Tim Bird & Sue Bird (A) • Avery Hill Publishing, £14.99
You can read a full interview with Tim Bird about the book here at BF
Review by Andy Oliver
Tim Bird will be at Table C20b and Avery Hill Publishing at Table C39 in the Travelling Man Hall at Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble 2024 runs from November 11th-17th with the convention weekend taking place on the 16th-17th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2024 coverage so far in one place here.
Art by Rocío Arreola Mendoza
