Q: Originally from France and Switzerland, what are some of your favorite things about living and working in New York City?

A: The diversity of New Yorkers, and summertime in the city. There’s a million different worlds all wrapped up in one place here, and NYC is constantly surprising and revealing. A lot of people find the summer gross and oppressive here, but I love it. I love sitting outside in the park, and walking around looking for a new place to eat, and there’s an incredible feeling of fun and joy and tension that’s wonderfully contagious.

Q: Do you keep a sketchbook? What is the balance between art you create on paper versus in the computer?

A: I keep a sketchbook, on and off, but hate showing it to anyone. It’s mainly a series of word-association lists and painfully rough thumbnails. I’m deathly jealous of artists who keep beautiful sketchbooks with masterpiece after masterpiece, as if they poured the creativity out of them in this endless fountain. I’ve come to accept that my brain just doesn’t “let loose” in that same way. I love the problem-solving aspect of illustration and comics and am at my most creative when I have a specific box to work in, and not when I have complete freedom. That is also probably why I do most of my work on paper and by hand. The freedom of working 100% digitally scares me—I wouldn’t know where to start or where to end, which is why I like the technical constraint of certain mediums.

Q: What is the most important item in your studio?

A: My surgical scalpel.

Q: How do you know when the art is finished?

A: When I can’t take anything else out and the client is happy. I think my work is best at its most bare bones, although editing is the part of the process I find most challenging. I’m also incredibly lucky to share a studio space with other illustrators and designers that I trust and admire (Rebecca Clarke, Molly Brooks, Isaiah King, Kenan Rubenstein, Andrew Boyle), so whenever in doubt, pestering them to voice opinions over my shoulder always helps.

Q: What elements of daily life exert the most influence on your work practice?

A: Walking my dog Leeloo. 100% of the time, if I need an idea, walking around the city, half paying attention to her and half paying attention to the craziness of New York will get me to the right place. There’s something about doing two things at the same time that lets my brain relax and be more open creatively.

Q: What was your favorite book as a child?

A: “R is for Rocket” by Ray Bradbury (for the twists at the end of each story that grab you already at the beginning), “Griffin and Sabine” by Nick Bantock (for the interactivity of the story, the voyeurism and tactility), the “Yakari” series by Job and Derib (my #1 childhood desire was talking to animals).

Q: What are the best books you’ve recently read?

A:  “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” by Italo Calvino (for the masterful structure with a dash of suspense); “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates (for understanding the American racial landscape); “Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry” by Leanne Shapton (for telling a story through an auction catalogue).

Q: If you had to choose one medium to work in for an entire year, eliminating all others, what medium would you choose?

A: This is definitely the trickiest question for me—I work in three or four different mediums specifically because I fear I’d get bored doing one thing and one thing only for an extended period of time. It’s important to me to try something fresh, and experimenting in different mediums and letting them influence one another works well for me. However I’m (hopefully) about to embark and several larger, more long-term projects, and I’m excited to be doing these in cut paper. There are a lot of different ways I can experiment with this medium, and can push it in different directions technically—either by playing with light and shadow and photography, or working more texturally, or more or less three-dimensionally. There is enough variety with cut paper technically that I know I’ll have fun working on that almost exclusively.

Q: If you could spend an entire day away from work and deadlines, what would you do and where?

A: Only one day?! All right, well if the fantasy has a limit I’d want to recharge rather than explore. Beach, hot white sand, my boyfriend and my dog under a shady umbrella nearby, a cold drink so sweet it'll knock a few teeth out in one hand, and a good book in the other.

Q: What was the [Thunderbolt] painting or drawing or film or otherwise that most affected your approach to art? 

A: When I was still in architecture school, I went as an exchange student to New Zealand and discovered all these American comics in the local library that I had never heard of before. Up until then I’d grown up on French bandes-dessinees, and thought American comics started and ended with Batman and Superman. I began reading a whole host of Indie comics, and ended up on Frank Miller’s Sin City series. I became fascinated with how he was portraying architecture and three-dimensionality in a very pure, graphic way. It led me to look into how architecture was portrayed in other comics, and I looked at Tatsumi’s Abandon the Old in Tokyo, Diaz Canales and Guarnido’s  Blacksad, and Peeters and Schuitten’s Obscure Cities series. These books were my stepping-stones from architecture and into illustration, and showed me how varied and intelligent comics and storytelling could be. When I read Asterios Polyp by David Mazzuchelli, I think that was the final straw for me to quit architecture and try something new. It just made such pure sense to me, and appealed to both my intellect and my heart. I always return to it regularly for inspiration.

Q: What would be your last supper?

A: Dense, delicious, salty vegetarian ramen. I watched the film Tampopo recently and have become mildly (extremely) obsessed.

Maëlle Doliveux is a French and Swiss illustrator, comics artist and animator who has lived all over the world, from New Jersey to New Zealand. She obtained a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from the University of Nottingham in 2008, and graduated from the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program at the School of Visual Arts in 2013.  She received a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators in 2015 for one of her short comics, among other industry recognition. In her spare time she enjoys sheep herding, jazz drumming, and making up fake hobbies for herself in her biographies. Her Pagan New York series is currently on view at The Greater Reston Arts Center in Virginia through February 18, 2017. Info
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