A Deviant Mind

Dance the Blues by Hazel Newlevant (Hazel Newlevant copyright 2013)

Pam Harrison, 2008 recipient of the Grant for her HOUSE OF THE MUSES series, talks to this year’s winner, Hazel Newlevant, about her works Dance the Blues, and If This Be Sin, the QPG, and more:

What drew you to creating comics?

Since I was a kid, I always wanted to be an artist, but I used to think I'd grow up to be an acrylic painter! Then when I was seventeen, I had a rough year and completely lost interest in the way I'd been painting, which was strictly realistic and reference based. That scared me, because I'd always thought of myself as “the artist.” If I couldn't create, what was I?

A very astute friend noticed the way I lit up when I talked about comics, and suggested I try interning at one of the local comics publishers in Portland. Then everything clicked. The whole time, I'd been reading manga and American art comics and drawing cartoony fan art, but I never considered it as a profession. I thought the observation of painting and the imagination of cartooning had nothing to do with each other, but I've been learning READ MORE AT EXAMINER.COM
(Editor's Note: Examiner.com no longer exists, so at some point I will have to locate the original interview and restore it. In the meantime, find the published works of Hazel Newlevant here.)