About Candice Purwin
Candice Purwin is a writer and illustrator making comics in Edinburgh.
Her work documents everything from social and political movements to the changing of the seasons, finding the human stories and tiny creatures which bind these great, tectonic shifts together.
Drawing © Candice Purwin.
Candice's comments
'I navigated 2020 through 52 books. Some prescient of things to come, some classics I'd been meaning to read for a while, and some that were purely serendipitous in their relevance or joy. I combined this book list with comics I'd made and diary-like sketchbook notes, drawing new connections between my life and this year unlike any other. Amidst the isolation of lockdown, reading really was like finding another dimension, a doorway in the back of the wardrobe, a place to go while the world burned to try and find ways to make it new.'
Candice Purwin's commission (PDF)
(18 MB; 12 pages)
Nadine Aisha Jassat's comments
Poet, writer and creative practitioner Nadine Aisha Jassat led the Fresh Ink initiative. She writes about Candice's commission:
'Candice Purwin's 'A Year in the Book Fort' is, in a word, phenomenal. The pull of telling the story of 2020 through library books, for a project housed in the National Library of Scotland, was irresistible – and yet I don't think commissioners could have predicted just how powerful Candice's piece would be, or how much it would capture moments both personal and national as the events of 2020 unfolded. They way Candice entwines her experience with the books she reads, the authors' worlds sucking her in, mirrors the way Candice's art captures the reader — pulling us into her year, her world, her thoughts and art and views. A stunning work of storytelling, power, and visual art.'