Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The Disturbing, Ethereal Comics of Cecilia Pego, a Mexican Artist in Exile


by Michael Dooley on October 19, 2012

I first met Cecilia "C.S." Pego in Artists’ Alley at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. A native of Mexico City, she was there to promote her new graphic novel, Exilia: The Invisible Path. I found it visually stunning, not to mention a welcome relief from all the soulless superhero stuff.
In the first half of our interview, last week, we discussed Pego's aesthetic evolution from late-1960s underground comix to late-1970s punk graphics and, more recently, to late-19th-century Nouveau illustration. She's since begun to explore a softer visual palette. She now overlays her sensuous, Aubrey Beardsley linework with delicate, ethereal colors. The narrative tone is more subdued and internal but just as disturbing as in those early comics, which dealt with serial killers and ecological destruction. Exilia is also more personal. "I'm an artist in exile," she says, "and these are my field notes from the imaginal frontier."