Artist Biography
I am an illustrator and painter with a passion for therapeutic art making. My artistic practice ranges from digital illustration using Procreate software with an iPad and Apple Pencil to traditional gouache, acrylic, and oil paintings. No matter my medium, I always follow the same philosophy: artmaking should bring peace, joy, and comfort. My latest illustrative work was produced for my Senior Thesis to complete my B.F.A. in Art Therapy at Endicott College. I have created a comic book that combines my interest in visual narratives with my passion for inclusion and acceptance.
This project began during the COVID-19 quarantine when I revisited my childhood love of animation to distract myself from the unstable state of the world. This sparked an interest in American and Japanese comic books. Throughout these stories, I noticed a lack of diverse characters. Female characters were presented as weak, characters with darker skin tones were depicted as racist stereotypes and openly queer characters were few and far between. I began designing original characters to combat the lack of proper representation in existing comics. The process began with designing the characters’ physical features but quickly transformed into developing their personalities, mannerisms, and backstories. Before I knew it, these characters had become outlets where I expressed different aspects of myself.
My comic book series, BEAST, tells the stories of the original characters I created during the COVID-19 quarantine. My art style is influenced by both Western cartoonists, including Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and Eastern manga artists, including Masashi Kishimoto, Hiromu Arakawa, and Haruichi Furudate. I hope my work reaches young comic book fans who don’t usually see themselves reflected in the stories they read.
Thesis Abstract
This thesis considers the role of diverse character representation in therapeutic comic book making. Individuals develop the most potent emotional connections to comic books when they can relate to the character’s experiences. Comic book therapy is a subsection of art therapy that uses narratives in the form of comic books to help individuals express themselves and process past experiences. Through the use of hand-rendered sketches on an iPad using Procreate software and an Apple pencil, characters were designed with unique and diverse qualities and personalities, which then became part of a storyboard. As a result, a 36-page comic book with grayscale illustrations and a full-color cover page was created. This thesis intends to encourage the use of comic books with consideration for the implicit inclusion of diverse populations as integration within art therapy practice.