Martha Newbigging is a visual and media artist with practices in illustration, comics, animation and textiles. They have illustrated over a dozen children’s books and their animations have been screened internationally. They have contributed to Journal of Illustration (UK), Nat Brut (US) and Conundrum (Canada). They teach illustration in the School of Creative Arts & Animation at Seneca College and have facilitated many comics, animation, and digital storytelling workshops for children and youth in both school and community settings. As a scholar, they are currently pursuing doctoral studies at York University where their practice-based research focuses on autobiographical drawing, critical pedagogy, and queer subjectivity.
 

PUBLICATIONS

Looking for queernes: Or experiments in drawing turned to queerness in childhood as the puzzle of an unintelligible subject, (graphic essay) in European Comics Journal, 2023.          

Drawing as Repertoire: Three Drawing Practices that Resist Matter Out-of-Place. In Spatialized Injustice in the Contemporary City: Protesting as Public Pedagogy. Eds. S. Nobmuso Dlamini & Angela Stienen. Oxford: Routledge, 2022. 
An essay on how drawing is used by three artists/activists––Coco Guzman, Jeffrey Cheung, and Syrus Marcus Ware––to contest spatial injustice, violence, and fear within contemporary North American cities. First published in  Nat Brut, Issue 14, 2020

What Do Comics Want? Drawing Lived Experience for Critical Consciousness,
in the Journal of Illustration, Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2018, Vol.5, No. 2., pp. 265-286. DOI: 10.1386/jill.5.2.265_1
This peer-reviewed article presents a reflection on drawing autobiographical comics as a method of engagement with critical theory and the potential for illustration education. 

Forming and Passageways, Nat Brut, Issue 13, 2019.
Essay on the comics and artwork of Toronto-based artist, Eli Howey.

Not As Perfect As We Think We Are, Conundrum: An Annual Magazine of the Comic Arts, 2021
An interview with Montreal-based artist, Lee Lai. First published in Nat Brut, Issue 13, 2019.

Drawing the Self into Being, Nat Brut, Issue 13, 2019.
An interview with Montreal-based artist and comics-maker, Sarah Mangle.

What do comics want? Using graphic narratives to play with memory, thesis paper in fulfilment of the Master of Environmental Studies, under supervision of dr. nancy viva davis halifax, York University, 2017.

 

PAPER PRESENTATIONS


2023 –  Graphic Medicine, University of Toronto, Canada
2021 – Sugar and spice and the not so nice: Comics picturing girlhood, Symposium, Ghent University, Belgium
2020 – Comics Studies Society Conference, Toronto (accepted but cancelled due to covid)
2019 – Liberal Arts Collective Conference, Penn State U., Pennsylvania
2019 – Comics Studies Society Conference, Ryerson U, Toronto
2018 – Asterdam Comics Conference, Vrije University, Netherlands
2018 – Comics Studies Society Conference, Champagne, Illinois
2018 – ICON 10 The Illustration Conference, Detroit, Michigan
2017 – Sexuality, Education & Social Justice Workshop, OISE, University of Toronto
2017 – lIlustrating Identity(ies) Conference, IDEA, Illustr4tio & Illustration Research Network
Nancy, France
  – panel participant  
2017 – Universities Art Association of Canada Conference, Banff, Alberta
2017 – Summer Institute in Sexuality Studies, York University – participant presenter
2016 – ICON 9 The Illustration Conference, Austin, Texas – co-presenter