ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the work of the artist Jerry Moriarty, who uses formal hybrid structures that combine word and image, painting and drawing, and fact and fantasy as a commentary on the representation of the life of the artist. Describing himself as a “Paintoonist” (painter + cartoonist), Moriarty uses a series of narrative paintings in juxtaposition with inked images and speech bubbles, to present a “portrait of the artist.” This portrait proposes a kind of life writing/drawing unconcerned with “real life” that nonetheless presents a comprehensive statement about the life of the artist in this combination between word and image. Moriarty’s work pushes a mutually implicating structure of narrative and media ecology, where the material effects of the book mimic and fortify its construction through a network of family stories. The hybrid medium and dialogue show that the transmission of life stories at the surface of the text are not only transactions between presenter and observer, but are objects of duration, assemblage, and mutual performance.
