Walking Shadows

Winner of the Rebecca Smith Award for Fine Art

In this uniquely beautiful wordless graphic novel reminiscent of legendary expressionist artists Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward, a working-class family struggles to make ends meet and raise their children in an isolating world of economic despair.

Walking Shadows intimately explores the lives of four family members: the father, a low-paid manual worker who hates his boring job and spends his non-working hours drinking at a bar; the mother, without friends or money, who cares for her sons but is overwhelmed by the family’s circumstances and finds solace in drunken oblivion; the two sons who fall into a pattern of petty crime and drugs, but after a sobering event, one brother realizes his choices while the other continues in a downward spiral. Will the family’s cycle of despair be broken . . . or repeated?

Neil Bousfield is a professional printmaker, animator, and teacher whose work has been exhibited throughout the United Kingdom. His engravings reflect his interest in social concerns and the use of visual art to convey a narrative story.