Art Is Hell: Walter Scott on the Funny, Agonizing ‘Wendy’

“No, Wendy! No!!”

It’s hard not to yell out loud while reading Walter Scott’s agonizingly hilarious graphic novels about a would-be artist named Wendy, making her way in the world, one terrible self-created drama after another.

Wendy started life, as many wonderful things do, by accident when Scott drew the character on a placemat, as a way to entertain friends. He had just finished his undergrad at Concordia University in Montreal and was trying to forge a career as an artist. Skewering the pain and preciousness of the art world, Wendy took off like a bottle rocket.

The publication of a full-length graphic novel, Wendy, launched the character. It was followed by two more: Wendy’s Revenge, set partially in Vancouver, and Wendy, Master of Art, wherein our heroine finds herself teaching at the University of Hell in small-town Ontario.

Scott’s work has won praise from some impressive folk — Zadie Smith, among others — as well as feature stories in the New Yorker and the Guardian, and a documentary treatment.

Even people only fuzzily familiar with the vagaries of contemporary art will recognize the humanity of Wendy, trying and failing, trying again. Hangovers, binge drinking and ill-advised hookups with creepy dudes also figure large. The series is as much about the fragility of human relationships — love, sex, jealousy, betrayal, forgiveness — as it is about making site-specific installations. One of the ongoing jokes in the books is that no one is sure what Wendy’s art actually is.

In Wendy’s most recent adventure, a whole new batch of experiences have been added, including aging, irrelevance, snarky students and the unique hell that is academia. As something of an autobiographical avatar for Scott, the character moves in tandem with her creator — yet she is so fully realized it’s difficult not to think of her, and care about her, as an independent entity.

The Tyee had a few questions for the Kahnawá:ke-born artist about his work and what Wendy might get up to next. The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The Tyee: Reading your work, I found myself either talking out loud to the characters, hiding my face in my hands or laughing like a hyena, none of which are my usual reactions. Your work walks a precarious line between funny and agonizing, with a lot of pathos mixed in. How do you access this particular balance between pain and pretentiousness?

Walter Scott: The more agonizing something is, the funnier it can be. Of course, a little bit of time has to pass before an agonizing experience can be funny. Being able to create fictions that are based on agonizing experiences is a way to come to terms with them and transform them.

When you think about the time and place from which Wendy emerged, do you feel a sense of nostalgia for your younger self, as well as that scene (crusty punks in Montreal)?

Well, no, not really. I am glad to have had those experiences in my youth, but I’m in no hurry to return to that spot. I suppose I can, in a way, by writing more stories set in that era. But Wendy is doing interesting things now, and I’m more interested in writing about her ongoing experiences.

Wendy’s Revenge tackles different art scenes: L.A., Japan, and of course Vancouver. Did you spend time here to soak up the peculiarities of the city (i.e., rain, crows, old poets in pork pie hats)?

I have spent time in all of those places, for various amounts of time, some short visits and some extended visits. I have always understood that travelling is a privilege that a lot of folks do not have, and so, in a way, I think the Wendy comics also serve as a kind of travelogue — a way to take those experiences in those places and turn them into something generative.

As Wendy has grown older, her experience has encompassed a number of ways in which artists make a living (teaching, residencies, grants). Did the entrance into the academic world open up an entirely new world to satirize?

Academia is fun to satirize, but not that fun. Eventually you run out of jokes. But I’m doing my best! Maybe Wendy will have to become a ferry driver or something new to keep it fresh.

As a more subversive form of critique, do you think comics are a way of better infiltrating communities, like the art world, that can seem quite obscure to regular folk?

Ultimately, although Wendy is set in the art world, I try to make my comics about people. And the art that they make in the most recent book, for instance, is an extension of their being, and a way to further understand the character. In that way, the art world and the art made in this fictional world serves a narrative function.

Do you feel like the excesses of the art world are almost beyond parody sometimes?

No, they’re not.

The totality of Wendy’s world is immersive, especially in the nuances of female friendships, with ongoing betrayals, jealousy, alliances and reconciliations. How important are the emotional aspects in your storytelling?

In making comic series that a casual observer might immediately write off as snobby, pretentious or cruel, it’s important to me that the Wendy series has an emotional core. That’s why I’m interested in the series being a story about people rather than “the art world” per se. Because regardless of your subject position, we are all interested in and drawn towards stories about other people — there is a possibility of seeing ourselves in them.

Do you feel Wendy kind of has a life of her own? Does she occasionally do things that surprise you? Do you still make yourself laugh when you are working on Wendy stories?

I know I’m doing something right when I’m laughing as I’m making a sketch. Wendy’s life and my life are intertwined in a way where I actually don’t think I can write the next book until I’ve lived a little bit longer. More things need to happen to me before I know when to start Wendy’s next chapter, and what the chapter might be about.