Ektopia

Tara McPherson has had my attention for quite some time. When I first caught up with her site I was hooked. I immediately felt emotionally involved with her characters. Mostly I felt sad but, hey, sadness is always accompanied with joy when it comes from looking at a painting or listening to music. Any regular visitor will know how much I bang on about artists’ work and I truly love the art from these artists but it’s rare that an artist’s work will actually make me feel real visceral emotions and this is what sets her work aside from many others.

Anyways, cue the book. Tara recently released her first book and that’s why I’m writing this all. Lonely Heart is published by DH Press (Dark Horse Comics’ “prose-publishing venture”). The association between her and Dark Horse isn’t immediately evident till you look more closely to Tara’s art. I guess her paintings are quite cartoon-like with their minimal colours and quirky outsider characters. Again, I find myself surprised that I hadn’t noticed this fact as I’ve always seen her characters as being quite lifelike! I don’t really know what this says about me seeing cartoon characters as real as the rest of us but I guess it’s best that we don’t go there! Back to the book… Lonely Heart is split into 4 sections; Paintings, Art Prints, Posters and Drawings.

The paintings in the first section are great. There are many highlights and one of these is Sometimes I Just Want A Hug as not only is it a wonderful image but it’s allied with a preliminary sketch of the piece on the opposite page but also a tracing paper insert that has the traced image that finally became the outline for the final piece (Eric Feng’s Fevolution also utilised this technique to show the inner workings of the characters). It’s such a fantastic addition to a book to have these kind of workings included. Personally, I find sketches as satisfying to look at as I do final pieces so this is such a great bonus. It doesn’t take long to work out the theme of which Tara’s work revolves as so many of the women she paints are missing their hearts. Not just their anatomical heart though, these girls have huge heart shaped voids in the front of their bodies! Subtle? Not really. Effective and emotive? Definitely. Lonely Hearts Gang Part 1 shows a blue haired girl with severed hands holds out her chuck of hear shaped torso, like a cake, a few inches in front of her wrists! Sounds morbid but it definitely isn’t. It’s simply stunning.

The art print section houses all the kind of work that I originally fell in love with when I was first introduced to her work. Eighteen months ago I stupidly didn’t buy her Dream A Little Dream triptych/comic strip. Looking back, it was for sale at a reasonable price and now I’m just kicking myself for not buying one of the print sets. Ho hum! At least there’s a decent representation of the three pages within this section. It’s so much more satisfying than looking at small images on the internet but at the same time so painful to think of what I’m missing by not having one of the original screen prints behind glass on my wall. The prints in this chapter are where the minimal colouring really kick in a they are all screen print specific. Each picture is titled and the details of the colour count and edition quantities are present including the 100 quantity that Dream A Little Dream was printed in…GET OVER IT REEVO! In fact, Tara’s work has caused quite an obsession with screen printing for me. I love the way her pieces of art have so much depth with so few colours. I’m reminded of Akira and the the amazing animated smoke in that movie. Even though there’s no real smoke here, I can relate to the ease that she adds depth with subtle single coloured shading in all the right places.

I had seen gig posters for sale in the past but had not really understood their high price. What I failed to understand was that, like Tara’s gig posters, they were limited edition prints rather than limitless standard posters that have shot of a conveyor belt. The poster section presents many of the amazing gig posters that she’s created especially for particular bands including many of my favourite acts including Green Day, Death Cab For Cutie, Air, Supergrass and many others. These differ from the art prints as they are not simply pieces of art but adverts I guess. Some are adaptations of earlier works while others are unique pieces especially for a particular job. Each one is amazing and if your a fan of Tara’s art and the band that she’s representing in one of these prints then I would guess you would go a long way to find and buy one.

The final section of drawings is exactly that; a collection of preliminary drawings from many of the pieces shown in this book. Some are inked while others are sketchy and it’s the perfect way to wind the book down. The book ends with a kind of bonus section that includes a great interview with Tara and a list of many of her painting tools and finally some photos from her personal photo album.

The strangest thing of all is how ridiculously cheap this book is. I can’t quite get my head around it actually. It’s and 8.5 x 11 inches hardback (satin and gloss finished) with 112 pages, which include the beautifully crafted transparent process images that I mentioned earlier…and all for a retail price of £11.99 or $19.95! I normally don’t bother mentioning prices in reviews as the vary so much from one retailer to the next but, considering that the above prices are retail, you can even find Lonely Heart for cheaper! Why wouldn’t you get a copy?! You can get a copy of Lonely Heart from all the usual retailers including via DH Press and Amazon UK (as well as via the Ektopia Store of course!).