Adrift on a Painted Sea

In this poetic, quietly moving ode to his deceased mother, the painter Sue Bird, cartoonist Bird (The Great North Wood) arranges a duet between his comics and her paintings. Tim recalls a home and childhood full of Sue’s artwork—a librarian with working class roots who grew up in the 1960s, Sue was an enthusiastic lifelong learner who “loved to paint the sea” but was not particularly interested in selling the results. After her death, Tim uncovers a discrepancy in a family story about a contest his mother won as a child, but it’s not a portal into a secret life. Rather, he discovers that “there are always mysteries—big or small—that go unanswered when you think you know everything about someone. There were so many things I wanted to ask her.” In a dialogue of sorts, Sue’s rich oil landscapes and still lives are interspersed throughout, along with a scrapbook of her letters and documents. Like his mother’s paintings, Tim’s narrative allows for physical and temporal space to bloom, though his touch is lighter and flatter. The final image depicts an elderly Sue in a small boat on a starlit ocean, as if Tim is granting her wish to be near the sea eternally. It’s an elegant and eclectic tribute to art as antidote to grief. (Oct.)