Tara Booth is a young author who burst into the small, well-ordered world of comics. In a few drawings posted on her Instagram account, she becomes a darling of the comic strip. Sometimes kind, sometimes serious, often atrociously funny, frequently very just.
More than 70 000 followers! Really?! We wouldn’t care much about numbers, but here’s the truth : we are enthusiastic about her many followers on our side too : her work displays a quasi-systematic social resonance, scratchy where it hurts, with a very mastered graphic approach that distinguishes her from many other artists on line.
After a few years at the Art School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she started comics in 2015. Quickly the dynamic and curious publishing houses Retrofit (USA) or Kus Comix (Latvia) published her pages.
Arbitraire, the french publishing house presents in 2018 « How to stay afloat – surnager au quotidien » : “the title is affirmative, « How to stay afloat » as directions to follow to address existence. However, it is hard not to see the issue that is nested there. Indeed, how do you live? How to support the tireless repetition of daily life?
In the form of light-weighted scenes, Tara Booth always brings us back to these questions through this omnipresent, bulky body. It’s constantly being dressed and undressed, embellished and protected by colorful patterns, but also filled with chips, medicine, alcohol, and haired, menstrued and weeping. “How to stay afloat” is a personal development book melted with a trash and underground comic strip, a poetic self-fiction where painting is a cure for the difficulty of existing; a book just for you.”
(Thanks also to Les Éditions Arbitraire for this doooooope partneship to get Tara Booth with us during both PFC#6 and the Festival International de bande dessinée d’Angoulême)
Online : www.instagram.com/ tarabooth
Bibliography :
• How to stay afloat – Surnager au quotidien (2018, Arbitraire) (in french)
• Nocturne (2018, 2dcloud)
• How to Be Alive (2017, Retrofit)
• Bummers (2016-2018, Brainfreeze Comics)
• D.U.I.I. (2016, Colorama)
• Unwell (2015, Kus comics)