An interview with Lucy Sullivan
Comic-book writer and artist best known for her graphic novel Barking.
Originally published 9 May 2020.
To accompany the release of her first full-length graphic novel, BARKING, I’ve interviewed Lucy Sullivan. Based in London, Lucy is a freelance artist, storyboard artist and critically-acclaimed animation director, based in London.
She graduated from Kingston University in 2005 with BA (Hons) in Illustration & Animation, and has taught Life Drawing, Location Drawing & Observational Drawing for Animation at Kingston University, Westminster University & London College of Communication (University of the Arts London).
BARKING was successfully crowdfunded with Unbound with over 280 backers, was co-commissioned by The Lakes International Comic Art Festival and supported with public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Exploring the uncomfortable truths about how society reacts to a person in the grip of a severe mental health crisis, BARKING is reminiscent of the work of Ashley Wood, Ralph Steadman and Dave McKean. In short, it’s brilliant, as is Lucy, who’s currently working on INDEXED, a low-Fi/sci-fi comic written by the awesomely acerbic Scottish writer, Fraser Campbell.
1/ What first motivated you to want to work professionally as an artist and have these motivations changed over time?
Probably the greatest push was my Dad dying suddenly. I was raised in a pub, so worked in hospitality from about 18. By that age I had flunked out of 6th form college and decided to work bars and travel, driven by a passion for snowboarding. It was an enjoyable but fairly vacuous time. I kept drawing throughout and made myself little comics and illustrations but when I came home from New Zealand, after Dad’s death and my subsequent mental health crisis, I had to re-evaluate how I was living. I’d seen a psychotherapist and through that realised how important drawing was for me and decided to go to Uni to pursue it professionally. Initially, I was drawn to Fine Arts and Life Drawing but quickly realised that at Art School this is found more in Illustration.
“Be brave enough to discard sections that aren’t adding to a project or as writers say ‘Kill Your Darlings’ and always understand and obey the rules of the universe you create.” – Lucy Sullivan
I took my degree at Kingston School of Art which is a combined Animation & Illustration BA and fell in love with hand-drawn animation. I worked in that area for a while after graduating and taught Life Drawing at the same time before moving into Comics. I do find that I get driven by a particular idea and that tends to push me towards the area I want to work in, for example, when I was making BARKING (always intended as a comic), I took a course in Oil Painting to keep up my Fine Arts practice and that in turn will become an influence on my next comic. It’s a kind of rolling, changing motivation influenced by ideas and influences coalescing until they start to take a solid form.
Choosing to be an artist is the best decision I made in those dark days and I’m very grateful to have the circumstances now that can allow me to do it full time.
2/ What piece of art or artist has most inspired you in your life and how?
I have varied influence in terms of Arts & Artists and very open to new inspiration. However, I have definitely been somewhat obsessed by certain creators.
In terms of Comic Artists; Dave McKean, Taiyo Matsumoto, Eleanor Davis, Lorenzo Mattotti, Katsuhiro Otomo & Gipi are continually inspiring. I love painting and traditional artists too and can spend hours staring at a Caravaggio, Egon Schiele or Jenny Saville and there is nothing more relaxing than drifting into the world of Yayoi Kusama. I listen to music constantly, read books or audiobooks whilst working and have a broad tastes there too but a definite focus on science & speculative fiction and fantasy/horror genres. We watch a lot of film, animation and TV in our house too and find I’m as influenced by that as much as anything else and would happily spend a lifetime watching Studio Ghibli or Del Toro films.
I don’t think I could pick a singular work to encompass all of that. I am absolutely an amalgamation of influences throughout my lifetime stretching back to the 1970s and hope that continues throughout my life. If I had to name some mind altering creations that I wouldn’t be me without… Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, American Werewolf in London, The Dark Crystal, Tank Girl, Pan’s Labyrinth and Akira.
3/ What one creative lesson have you learned that you wish you could travel back in time and tell your younger self?
Just get on with it! Stop worrying about what people will think, if it’s going to be good or not and just make it. I wish I’d followed my love of comics much earlier on and although I don’t think any good comes from regret it’s a nagging one for me. However, the other areas I’ve worked in, particularly animation and taught me a few rules I apply when I work as standard.
Never create for an audience, make your work as you intended it. Be brave enough to discard sections that aren’t adding to a project or as writers say ‘Kill Your Darlings’ and always understand and obey the rules of the universe you create. Other than that, make the bloody thing Lucy and stop procrastinating!
4/ If you could collaborate with anybody in history, living or dead, who would it be and why?
What a quandary! I couldn’t choose one though but instead add a time-travelling aspect where I could hop through eras and genres. Learn to paint in Medici era Tuscany or Successionist Vienna, then break all the rules at 1960s art schools with Hockney and Freud and follow it up make 1980s horror films with John Landis and 1990s experimental animation in Bristol and that all gets pulled together on an epic graphic novel with a great writer like Iain Banks in the style of Transition.
I’d be a happy creator. I’d also bite my arm off to work with Margaret Atwood, Max Porter or Nick Harkaway. I love authors whose work taps into my mind in a way that makes me feel like they merely articulated my thoughts but in a far more sophisticated and somewhat nightmarish way than I ever could.
4/ If you woke tomorrow and were no longer constrained by time, budgets or even skills that you haven’t learned yet, what would you make?
An animated feature film. It would be hand-drawn and painted, perhaps even with live-action sequences but mostly it would be epic in it’s sprawling, narrative arc in the vain of Akira. I would employ some favourite creators, writers, artists and composers to help develop it and bring to life. In fact my next graphic novel idea would be perfect for this and in many ways BARKING was animated in my head. I’d love a crack at a full-length animation of that too. It would take a lifetime but would be time very well spent.
I do like being in full control of my stories as an artist/writer but I miss collaborating and working as a team, it would be great to be in a studio environment again and a collective immersion in a creating a singular work.