Artist Spotlight: Illustrator / Graphic Novelist / Animator, CANDICE PURWIN

Candice Purwin is an illustrator, animator and comics artist based in Edinburgh. Her first graphic novel, Idle Women: On the Water, was released in 2020.

Following this, she developed animation for the play STARS, a short film adaptation of which is now enjoying life on the festival circuit. Candice continues to work on commissioned projects, run workshops and she recently completed her first fiction comic series, The Book of Murmurs.

How did you get started in illustration and animation? 

I studied film at university and then got into making comics in my late twenties. They are the films I can make by myself in my room. I love the language of panelled storytelling. Graphic novels play with time and space using boxes and gutters in a way I find endlessly fascinating. Animation is magic, I’ve loved it since I was very small. You can bring anything you want to life if you have the patience and the imagination. I really think it was STARS that made me learn those skills in a meaningful way though.  

Who were your creative inspirations growing up? 

I always liked quite dark storytellers. The Struwwelpeter book and the Dark, Dark House. I loved Don Bluth’s animation, especially An American Tale. I also watched Jan Swankmeijer’s Alice when I was probably too young (thank you Channel 4), and I still think about it. The covers of the Moomin books, especially Comet in Moominland really stick with me even though I never read them. Tove Jansson, Nick Dewar and Films! Films! Films! remain creative touchstones. My head is like a scrapbook, it holds images alarmingly tight. 

What’s the strangest thing that ever inspired a drawing? 

I think my inspiration is always quite banal and then the drawings get strange. I remember the noise and jerky movements of the Rome underground sparking stories about subterranean creatures. The little avatar when I first started writing comics was a floating wolf’s skull on a little human body. I couldn’t draw people’s faces for a long time, so I hid inside this Loup Garou. This creature, The Beast, as she became known is who I embodied when I was writing my first graphic novel for Idle Women. Which was incidentally how I met Moj (Mojisola Adebayo).

You’re the animation artist for Mojisola Adebayo’s STARS, which is returning to London next month. How did you first get involved with the project?

As I said, Moj and I met when she was Artist in Residence on Idle Women’s canal boat, The Selena Cooper. I believe she was in the first stages of researching and writing STARS. Moj was already thinking about incorporating animation into STARS and here I was, drawing the canalscapes and strange art world we were both inhabiting. At some point she sent me a short piece of Nommo dialogue and I made an experimental hand drawn, inked and scanned, animation to go along with it. Our fate was sealed. I had never animated anything on this scale before. To think that we were able to adapt it into a short film, that STARS is flying around the globe right now screening at quite a few festivals, is wild.

How do you deal with creative blocks—or do they just fear you now?

I draw a lot. Every day really. If I can’t work on one thing, I’ll draw something else. Sometimes realising the images I have in my head takes a lot of work, but it’s mostly about careful persistence and drawing around the problem to find its sometimes sticky heart. Walking can also help to work out the shapes of something I can’t quite see yet.

How do you let off steam? 

Riding bikes, walking a lot, looking at the sea. Being outside never fails to calm my head when it’s at its sharpest.

What advice would you give to your past self when you were just starting out?

It was quite an unconventional path I followed to get here, but I’m not sure I would have wanted it any other way. I’m not sure I’m any wiser now than when I first started out on this peculiar visual journey. Perhaps I would tell my four-year-old self to ‘Tie that foil string around your wrist or you’ll never stop thinking about the time you lost the horse balloon’.

What’s coming up next for Candice Purwin?

I spent last year finishing my first fiction graphic novel. It was a very ambitious undertaking and I wasn’t sure at the time if it was the right way to go about it. Although I can’t officially announce anything yet, there are some very exciting things on the horizon concerning the book. Watch this space and until then go and see STARS at Brixton House!   

STARS: An Afrofuturist Space Odyssey by Mojisola Adebayo, featuring animation by Candice Purwin, is coming to Brixton House from 5 to 28 June. Get your tickets now!
Explore more of Candice’s work at candicepurwin.com.