The bad news is that I missed the Rand Holmes retrospective exhibit. (BoingBoing has a description here.)
Rand Holmes taught himself how to draw by copying Wally Wood and Will Eisner. He drew, among many other things, Harold Hedd. It was his work in Fog City Comics, that I picked up out of a bin at Cosmic Comics in Cleveland, Ohio many years ago that got my attention. And then I saw his art in the 1980s comic books Alien World and Twisted Tales.
It was in the 1980s that he moved himself and his family to the remote Lasqueti Island, in the Georgia Strait, north of Vancouver. He wanted to live off the land. Rand Holmes concentrated on painting. He was, as you will see when we get to look at all of his sketchbooks in the video, a prolific guy. He didn't talk a lot, his widow explains. But he had a lot of projects.
He died at the age of 55, while undergoing chemotherapy for Lymphoma in 2002.
So, the good news is that even though the event is over, there is this wonderful video report on the 2007 gallery show from Patrick Rosenkranz. Why it's appearing now, two years after the exhibit, is anyone's guess. But I'm thankful and glad to see the work and listen to his wife and sons and friends talk about this talented Canadian underground cartoonist.
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