January of 2013. I was unemployed and walking my flatmates dog Sadie while she recovered from knee surgery. The Toronto winter that year was particularly fierce, the pipes in our bathroom froze often. The streets were lined with snow drifts. There was an ice storm that crept through the city leaving beautiful, silent, destructive chaos in its wake. Directionless and unsure of myself, I began writing a weekly comic and named it for a little skull-headed werewolf character I’d been drawing for a while: Loup Garou.
For two years she gave me something to focus on while my life bounced from Canada back to the UK, from London to Edinburgh, around shift work in cafes and a across a plethora of addresses.
The comics are poorly scanned, unapologetically nonsensical and kept my hands in honest ink when I had very little other reason to be making work.
She opened many doors for me, teaching me to write and remain disciplined. When I applied to a residency with the collective Idle Women which changed my life as an artist, she was the only portfolio I had. Whatever has happened to me since, it all started with Loup.
