Karrie Fransman @ Comic Con 2015

Talking to Karrie Fransman at Glasgow Comic Con was a rare delight: her work has been featured in The Guardian and The Telegraph, but it is her graphic novels - and various other projects - that make her an exceptional artist. Both The House That Groaned and  Death of The Artist reveal her intellectual curiosity and willingness to play with the form of the comic book. Her talk was witty, and her self-deprecated humour belies her dynamic aesthetic.

Death of The Artist is an experimental take on story-telling, that plays post-modern games with the identity of the creator: if The House is a more recognisable narrative, it is a rare example of a British comic book that is intimate and cheeky. Her drawing style is vivid and energetic, evoking the busy panels of Where's Wally? even as she unfolds a delicate tale.

Yet Fransman's work goes beyond the graphic novel and draws parallels with visual art experiments. Her project on The South Bank for Alchemy is a beautiful collaboration that takes the loose comic aesthetic and applies it to an installation that acts like a full-size paper theatre. Another commission sat her circular self-portrait (which told a tale of eternal artistic creation and frustration) within a gallery in a contemporary take on that time-honoured painting training. 

Fransman's approach to sequential art is subversive of the form, pushing it into new areas and asking questions about its nature: she has presented illustrated articles and longer form narratives that ask questions about the way that images and text react to each other, and integrate into a powerful way of exploring ideas and telling stories.