With obvious admiration and poignant longing, British comics maker Tim Bird memorializes his late mother, artist Sue Bird, in Adrift on a Painted Sea, a loving showcase of her life in paintings. Although Sue painted for much of her life, her work was exhibited just once when, as a schoolgirl, her marine still life hung in "the big art gallery in town" after winning a competition: "It looked like it belonged in a museum," he remembers.
Bird reveals glimpses of Sue's artistic life in crisp panels dominated by blue, orange, and gray. In particular, "she loved to paint the sea." He notes, "She created an enormous body of work." Bird built Sue a website to share and sell her paintings, but the technology overwhelmed her, and Bird was too busy to help further. "She was never really interested in selling her work though. She enjoyed creating it and that was enough for her." After her death, her family discovered the winning competition letter and exhibition catalog, and the discrepancies they found set in motion a mystery that would "go unanswered": "There were so many things I wanted to ask her. So many things I wanted to talk with her about."
What Bird does know of Sue affectingly fills his pages, which combine her gloriously rich paintings with his simpler line-drawn comics. Most memorable are when their disparate styles become multilayered collaborations: Sue's seascape in textured oils, adorned with Bird's boxed sketches of a seagull and a windblown hat. Mother and son produce a lingering homage to family, creativity, and the everlasting power of art. --Terry Hong