Mary Sue Beats the Beatniks

A 3rd Year Fine Art, Comic/Zine exhibition on for one day only. With original paintings, comics and prints for sale, a comic and book exchange as well as behind the scenes 'making of' installation.

Mary Sue Beats the Beatniks is a comic about a 21 year old woman who looks to escape her life through old Beatnik culture. A mid-20th century culture where things didn't matter, and you were as cool as you needed to be while looking the part. From reading Beatnik books such as On the Road, Mary Sue is exposed to a old-new culture that flourished in big cities with jazz clubs and hole-in-the-wall coffee shops. While searching for the best escape in Beatnik Mary Sue finds herself swimming in the history of a world that was pioneered by Men who might not have even wanted her around despite all of her daydreaming. 

Mary Sue Beats the Beatniks was created as a reflection of the artist's own feelings about the Beatniks movement and if the men who pushed the movement into the public eye should be lauded or condemned for their flaunting of domestic abuse and misogyny. The complexities of understanding how to look at historical figures simmers right below the colorful surface of the comic. The story was initially drawn out on newspaper but at some point, the newspaper drawings grew too numerous to be boiled down into a succinct story

So the comic made the leap to paintings. The artist began with three paintings that steadily grew into sixteen with every plot point coming from the original newspaper drawings.

The creation of this comic is drenched in love and a need to understand the past. The history of the Beatniks movement is longer than one might think but it ends all the same, petering out in a large city that eats cultural movements for breakfast. Each of the sixteen paintings have been carefully brought to life through bright, colourful paint and charcoal. Conceived in a warm bedroom full of creativity. From the books loosely stacked in a pile by the door to the messy pallet to the swath of clothes in the corner Mary Sue Beats the Beatniks was destined to be the artist's honest reflection of the Beatnik movement and her own life spent in a bedroom.

Artist

Madeleine is an artist from Essex. Her practice is painting based, with strands of writing and drawing plaiting together.

Stemming from a lived experience growing up chronically ill, themes of escapism, fatigue and the bedroom are shown, with influences from the books and comics she reads.