Maurice Vellekoop | |
---|---|
Born | 1964 60) | (age
Education | Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto |
Known for | Graphic artist, illustrator |
Awards | Firecracker Alternative Book Award, 1999 [1] Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame, 2024 |
Maurice Vellekoop (born 1964) is a Canadian artist, cartoonist, and illustrator. He is most known for his queer cartoons which often feature naked men. He has drawn pin-ups as well as multi-character comics. Vellekoop is also a fashion designer with his drawings and designs appearing in popular magazines across the United States.
Vellekoop was born and raised in Canada where he eventually graduated from art school and became a renowned artist. His work has been featured on the global stage and is also interdisciplinary as he has written books, worked on films, and also published in major publications.
Maurice Vellekoop was born in 1964 and was raised on the outskirts of Toronto. He was raised in the Christian Reformed Church, a Calvinist sect, which was not accepting of homosexuality. [2] He participated in weekly church services, catechism classes, went to Christian schools, and was a member of the Calvinist Cadet Corps. [3]
In his kindergarten report card, he was described as a "self-confident child in school" and "is spending more time with other children in such activities as the "house" and the sand box." [4] Vellekoop was cognizant of his uniqueness from an early age when he desired dolls and began to draw intricate images of princesses. [5]
He had four older siblings, all of which were artists. His parents were Dutch immigrants. [3] His father was known for his love of opera and his mother ran a hair salon out of the family house's basement. Ingrid, Vellekoop's sister, encouraged him to attend the Ontario College of Art and Design which he did from 1982 to 1986. [6]
After graduating from art school, Vellekoop began his career as a freelance artist being featured in several shows early on in his career. In 1986, several of his comics were published via REACTOR Art and Design in Toronto. [7] He joined the REACTOR studio near the beginning of his career. He wrote a few zines entitled "Fear Comics" and "Guilt Comics." [8] His work was even featured internationally in the Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, Italy. By 1994, Vellekoop was working for popular American magazines like Vogue who sent him as a reporter to cover the "autumn couture collection" in Paris which he published as a comic. He also completed work for art exhibitions in the Netherlands. [9]
Vellekoop illustrated for the book Sex Tips for a Dominatrix, written by Patricia Payne. [8] In his work in the fashion industry, he is known for using "felt pens and watercolours." Vellekoop saw himself as a "mild satirist" in general and utilized fashion as well as sex in satirical work. [10]
Vellekoop's work was featured in several shows in the United Kingdom including at Twenty Twenty Two in Manchester and Space Station Sixty Five in London. He wrote his own coming of age story, I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together , which shares more about his early years specifically his religious upbringing and growing up in the North American suburbs. [3]
His work also appeared in the Jeffrey Schwarz' documentary film Boulevard! A Hollywood Story . [11] The film tells the story of Gloria Swanson and her work to make Sunset Boulevard a musical where she ends up in a love triangle with two gay songwriters: Dickson Hughes and Richard Stapley. [12]
His work has appeared in publications such as Drawn & Quarterly , Time , GQ , Cosmopolitan, The New Yorker, Madamoiselle, Cosmetics, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Fashion, Mother Jones, Glamour, and Wallpaper , as well as in the books ABC Book: A Homoerotic Primer, Sex Tips from a Dominatrix, Pinups, Mensroom Reader and Vellevision. [13] [10] [2]
He has also done work for multiple corporations including Swissair, Abercrombie & Fitch, Air Canada, Smart Car, LVMH, and Bush Irish Whiskey. [10] [2]
In Vellekoop'sPin-Ups, Vellekoop is influenced by a number of queer artists including George Quaintance, Harry Bush, and Tom of Finland. His artistic style reflects the masculine and BDSM styles of these artists. Vellekoop is also influenced by popular culture including "Leonardo da Vinci's famous Human Figure in a Circle Illustrating Proportions," and "Disney's Jungle Book." [13] In terms of comics, Vellekoop's main inspiration is Alison Bechdal and has also been greatly influenced by queer writers, like Oscar Wilde. [3]
In Borrelli's Stylishly Drawn: Contemporary Fashion Illustration, Vellekoop is categorized as a diverse artist "borrowing elements of caricature and cartooning to do so, often with much humor and wit." Vellekoop's fashion drawings utilizes themes of sexuality as well as different ethnicities and gender identities. [10]
One of Vellekoop's reoccurring characters is Gloria Badcock, a magazine editor who serves as a symbol of sexual liberation and freedom. [8] The character is pansexual but the character's story is representative of the relationship between many women and gay men, which Vellekoop believes is special and sacred. [2]
Vellekoop's style has been described as "undeniably celebratory queerness" as his work openly discusses homosexuality. [14]
In 2024, Vellekoop was inducted into the Giants of the North: The Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame. [15]
Vellekoop lives on Toronto Island. [6] He is openly gay [16] and is in a relationship with his partner, Gordon Bowness. [2]
Franklin Christenson "Chris" Ware is an American cartoonist known for his Acme Novelty Library series and the graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (2000), Building Stories (2012) and Rusty Brown (2019). His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression. He tends to use a vivid color palette and realistic, meticulous detail. His lettering and images are often elaborate and sometimes evoke the ragtime era or another early 20th-century American design style.
Gregory Gallant, better known by his pen name Seth, is a Canadian cartoonist. He is best known for his series Palookaville and his mock-autobiographical graphic novel It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken (1996).
Drawn & Quarterly (D+Q) is a publishing company based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, specializing in comics. It publishes primarily comic books, graphic novels and comic strip collections. The books it publishes are noted for their artistic content, as well as the quality of printing and design. The name of the company is a pun on "drawing", "quarterly", and the practice of hanging, drawing and quartering. Initially it specialized in underground and alternative comics, but has since expanded into classic reprints and translations of foreign works. Drawn & Quarterly was the company's flagship quarterly anthology during the 1990s.
Julie Doucet is a Canadian underground cartoonist and artist, best known for her autobiographical works such as Dirty Plotte and My New York Diary. Her work is concerned with such topics as "sex, violence, menstruation and male/female issues."
Douglas Austin Wright was a Canadian cartoonist, best known for his weekly comic strip Doug Wright's Family. The Doug Wright Awards are named after him to honour excellence in Canadian cartooning.
Marc Bell is a Canadian cartoonist and artist. He was initially known for creating comic strips, but Bell has also created several exhibitions of his mixed media work and watercoloured drawings. Hot Potatoe [sic], a monograph of his work, was released in 2009. His comics have appeared in many Canadian weeklies, Vice, and LA Weekly. He has been published in numerous anthologies, such as Kramers Ergot and The Ganzfeld.
Russell Patterson was an American cartoonist, illustrator and scenic designer. Patterson's art deco magazine illustrations helped develop and promote the idea of the 1920s and 1930s fashion style known as the flapper.
The Playboy is a graphic novel by the Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown, serialized in 1990 in Brown's comic book Yummy Fur and collected in different revised book editions in 1992 and 2013. It deals with Brown's guilt and anxiety over his obsessive masturbation to Playboy Playmate models.
I Never Liked You is a graphic novel by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown. The story first ran between 1991 and 1993 under the title Fuck, in issues #26–30 of Brown's comic book Yummy Fur; published in book form by Drawn & Quarterly in 1994. It deals with the teenage Brown's introversion and difficulty talking to others, especially members of the opposite sex—including his mother. The story has minimal dialogue and is sparsely narrated. The artwork is amongst the simplest in Brown's body of work—some pages consist only of a single small panel.
The Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame, formally known as Giants of the North: The Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame, honours significant lifelong contributions to the art of cartooning in Canada.
Michel Rabagliati is a Canadian cartoonist born and based in Montreal, Quebec. He was published by Drawn & Quarterly and is currently published by Conundrum Press in English, and La Pastèque in French.
James Sturm is an American cartoonist and co-founder of the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. Sturm is also the founder of the National Association of Comics Art Educators (NACAE), an organization committed to helping facilitate the teaching of comics in higher education.
Hicksville is a graphic novel by Dylan Horrocks originally published by Black Eye Comics in 1998. The novel explores the machinations of the comic book industry, and contains a slightly fictionalized account of the history of mainstream American comics, with particular attention paid to the era of Image Comics.
William Woggon was an American cartoonist who created the comic book Katy Keene.
David Collier is a Canadian alternative cartoonist best known for his fact-based "comic strip essays."
Denise "Deni" Loubert is a Canadian comics publisher, co-founder of Aardvark-Vanaheim, and founder of Renegade Press. She is the ex-wife of Dave Sim, with whom she founded Aardvark-Vanaheim and published Cerebus from issues #1 to #77 (1977–1985).
Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown attracted the attention of critics and peers in the early 1990s alternative comics world when he began publishing autobiographical comics in his comic book Yummy Fur. During this period Brown produced a number of short strips and two graphic novels: The Playboy (1992) and I Never Liked You (1994). The personal and revealing deal with Brown's social awkwardness and introversion, and the artwork and page layouts are minimal and organic. In 2011 Brown returned to autobiography with Paying for It, an account of his experience with prostitutes.
Canadian comics refers to comics and cartooning by citizens of Canada or permanent residents of Canada regardless of residence. Canada has two official languages, and distinct comics cultures have developed in English and French Canada. The English tends to follow American trends, and the French, Franco-Belgian ones, with little crossover between the two cultures. Canadian comics run the gamut of comics forms, including editorial cartooning, comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, and webcomics, and are published in newspapers, magazines, books, and online. They have received attention in international comics communities and have received support from the federal and provincial governments, including grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. There are comics publishers throughout the country, as well as large small press, self-publishing, and minicomics communities.
Justin Robinson Hall is an American cartoonist and educator. He has written and illustrated autobiographical and erotic comics, and edited No Straight Lines, a scholarly overview of LGBT comics of the previous 40 years. He is an Associate Professor of Comics and Writing-and-Literature at the California College of the Arts.
Lawrence Lindell is an American cartoonist, speaker, and musician. He has written autobiographical comics including From Truth With Truth and Couldn’t Afford Therapy, So I Made This. His work covers mental health issues, blackness, and queerness. He lives in the Bay Area, California. Lindell is open about living with bipolar depression and PTSD; two of the main themes of his work. He has a forthcoming middle-grade graphic novel called Buckle Up due out in August 2024 with Random House Graphic. His 2023 graphic novel Blackward, with Drawn and Quarterly, was shortlisted for the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Graphic Novel.
In addition to the awards, publisher Deni Loubert and cartoonist Maurice Vellekoop were inducted into the Canadian Cartooning Hall of Fame, Giants of the North.