However things don’t necessarily work out…this is in the early 80’s and the world of art is still very much a man’s world. This story, which combines text and images in both comic and scrap-book format, is so incredibly well-crafted that I can barely believe it is fictional. The story is a wonderfully powerful tale of a young woman wanting to escape her mundane life and become and artist. They left strange-shaped holes in my life, their outlines too specific to ever be filled by anyone else. The expectation was for a woman to be a wife and a mother and Alison rejected that option to pursue her passion for art, finding herself in a world still dominated by male creativity and voices.

Alison by Lizzy Stewart review – the making of an artist Alison by Lizzy Stewart review – the making of an artist

We meet her in her early 20s when she’s married and living in a relationship that’s just not going anywhere, in fact she really doesn’t know who she is. LIZZY STEWART has been a freelance illustrator since graduation from Edinburgh College of Art in 2009. Photograph: Lizzy Stewart ‘In Alison, an image will fill a spread, freezing the moment in a flash of detail. A woman living by the seaside who leaves her life and family to pursue a new life in London and see if she can make it.I really liked the way the author added so many different styles, colours and even interspersed the art with letters, it was visually fabulous. This book was really absorbing and I can't think of any other graphic novels that I could even compare it to.

Alison by Lizzy Stewart | Waterstones Alison by Lizzy Stewart | Waterstones

And OMG why didn’t anyone tell me how much I was missing out, and that adding STUNNING artwork to a book doesn’t mean it’s any less of a story? M’ha emocionat en diferents moments: a vegades llegint, a vegades amb la sorpresa de passar pàgina i veure una il·lustració plena d’emocions i sinceritat. Her inspirations include folk culture, flora and fauna and life in far-flung cities and a compulsive need to tell stories. When the book begins, it is the mid-1970s and she is an 18-year-old newlywed, her husband, Andrew – a good man, but also rather a dull one – having helped make reality her dreams of an ordinary, grownup life just like the one her parents had before her. It reads like a memoir and tells the story of Alison who follows her heart to London and becomes a self-taught talented artist.

Instead, Stewart’s affectionate and beautifully pitched account follows Alison from uncertain teenager to successful modern-day artist.

Alison by Lizzy Stewart review – a tale as old as the hills made new by Alison by Lizzy Stewart review – a tale as old as the hills made

And she does this without judgment, allowing you to peer into what is spoken within the panels, the descriptive text outside the panels, and even how the art itself reveals (or doesn't reveal) the truth of living and being. The fictional Kerr is, as you might have gathered, a self-satisfied bore, and Alison spends much of her life inching out of his shadow. She meets new people, and makes new friends, and the years begin to tick by productively, punctuated eventually by exhibitions of her paintings, each one bigger and more successful than the last. Yet Alison mixes its mostly black-and-white panels with pages full of written background or characterisation, alongside handwritten notes, half-finished portraits, flower cuttings, ticket stubs and sticky-tape stains.A partir d’aquí, ens explica en primera persona com al llarg dels anys es troba a ella mateixa i el seu lloc: com a persona, com a dona i com a artista. What's interesting about the form is the use of both image and text, making it feel like a written memoir with pictures in a way.