The Wendy Award by Kahnawake-raised Montreal based New Yorker cartoonist and fine artist Walter Scott is in stores now. He went from a fine artist self publishing comics on the side to an internationally renowned cartoonist. It is a story about a young contemporary artist who is nominated for a national art award.
“What is it like to create a thinly veiled piece of fiction that is so inseparable from your personal life that it completely exposes the private life of you and those around you?” Said Scott while reading from his book.
Scott says, “I made zines growing up just like the self-published stapled things that I would hand out or sell or whatever.
“Never really thinking that it would go anywhere necessarily except sharing with my friends.
“But then one of my zines got into the hands of a publisher and they asked me to create a little bit more material and then we published it as an official book.”
“Let me be clear. It’s fascinating to me how it seems to have no concern for protecting the people around you whatsoever. I could never do something like that,” said Scott while reading from his book.
Scott explains, “I feel like I’ve always been making comics.
“I stopped making comics in art school for a little while and then after I graduated it just naturally came back to me as something that I wanted to do.
“So I would say my whole life really.”
“Surely there must have been some personal consequences. Aesthetic choices put lives on new courses,” said Scott while reading from his book.
For Scott – drawing is personal
He says, “I draw it (inspiration) from my own life.
“It’s semi-autobiographical work of fiction.
“So there’s a lot of me in it and for better or for worse there’s a lot of my friends’ experiences in it as well.”
“Given how high stakes the Food Hut Award is, it must be triple for you. Any new work of yours that doesn’t match the raw honesty of your previous work will no doubt be seen as a failure, no?” said Scott while reading from his book.
He goes on to explain, “I’m very blessed with a creative family.
“A lot of my family members are artists in their own way.
“I think that sort of living outside of the city kind of, it gave me what I felt like was an outsider perspective that helped me to see things like maybe in a different way than if I grew up in the city properly.”
Scott is passionate about his work and his favourite part is one that he finds very soothing.
He says, “My favourite part of the work that I do is being done with the writing and then finally just inking the tracing part is very soothing but generally also feeling like I’m sharing a part of my experiences through fiction that other people can relate to.”
His advice for those who enjoy drawing, “I would say that if you want to write your own graphic novel, I would say start small and do a few pages and show it to friends and get some feedback and then keep going.
“And then before you know it, you’ll have more than enough material.”
