Julie Heffernan

BABE IN THE WOODS

I am beyond thrilled to have published my first graphic novel: Babe in the Woods, or the Art of Getting Lost, published by Algonquin Books. Babe emerged from decades of storytelling through my 40+ years of painting, exhibiting and lecturing.  In the book, a young artist named Julie, on a hike with her infant son, takes a wrong turn and finds herself on an extraordinary journey through her tangled past. It's a love letter to the mother she is mourning; an exposé of a budding artist’s missteps and a college seminar on how great art can be a vehicle for perspective – how to see, how to think, how to navigate life’s obstacles and wonders.

The character Julie’s confusions and eventual realizations culminate in teaching moments, visual and otherwise, for herself and the reader, which are made exquisitely clear in the graphic novel form. I had no idea until I did this book that I could bring to the world (or at least anyone who reads my book!) so much of what I've learned over the years, not only about making art but about what makes great art actually GREAT!

PRAISE

"Giotto and Georgia O’Keeffe are not going to give us graphic novels, but another great painter has: Julie Heffernan. Her reverie about getting lost in the woods with a baby strapped to her is many kinds of beauty: the sheer visual beauty of her paintings and drawings here, the beauty of introspection and of the brilliant exposition of a reverie during a walk that went too far into the unknown. Or just far enough to find those things that can be found no other way."
—Rebecca Solnit, award-winning author of A Field Guide to Getting Lost

"I've admired Julie Heffernan's sublime paintings for decades. Babe in the Woods is a wonderful book and I highly recommend it. Brilliant, engaging and elegant!"
—Emil Ferris, author of My Favorite Thing is Monsters  

"I love this! My words cannot do it justice."
—Roz Chast, bestselling author of Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? and I Must Be Dreaming

"Visual and emotional narrative dynamite. Julie Heffernan's vision, artwork, and paintings are dazzling, masterful, deep, evocative, irreverent, and lush as she travels the world of the collective unconscious. She is a very, very special soul and artist."
—David O. Russell, award-winning filmmaker 

SUMMARY

One summer day, a young artist with a newborn—sleep-deprived, desperate to escape her hot, cramped apartment and her oblivious husband—sets off on a hike in the country with her baby boy, Sam, strapped to her front and her senses fully attuned to the colors, the sounds, and the flora and fauna in the woods around her. During her journey, Julie reflects on her childhood, her parents, her marriage, and her path to becoming a painter. Her memories soon merge with the imaginative pictorial worlds she invents in her work, creating a glorious and perturbing narrative.

When Julie suddenly realizes that they are lost, with few supplies, as darkness begins to set in, she must come to terms with the sudden gravity of her situation and invent tools for coping. She then discovers her own resourcefulness: snacking on wild garlic and fixing a torn shoe; tucking herself and her baby into a cave for the night; climbing a tall tree for a better vantage point. Each step in the unknown terrain of the forest leads her deeper into a reckoning with survival and unresolved past issues. She invokes the struggles of painters like Artemesia Gentileschi, women’s strength in Rubens’ Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, and the plights of activists like Julia Butterfly Hill, illuminating how great art can be a vehicle for perspective—how it teaches us how to see, think, and navigate obstacles and wonders and find one's way out into a capacious and self-determined life.

Beautifully told and illustrated by an established fine painter whose work has been collected around the world, Julie Heffernan's Babe in the Woods is an extraordinary journey of memory, remorse, and rebirth, and a powerful lesson in trust in one's self, offering a new way of seeing for anyone who feels lost in the world.

SAMPLE PAGES