LINES ON PAPER Artist Bio - Jim Woodring
Jim Woodring was born in Los Angeles in 1952 and enjoyed a childhood made interesting by frequent hallucinations, apparitions, disembodied voices and other psychological malfunctions.

Despite the generally frightening nature of his delusions he learned to accept
them as part of life and was accordingly a reasonably cheerful and good-natured lad.

After barely graduating from high school Woodring got a job as a garbage man and lived in picturesque squalor as he set about the task of capturing his inner life in words and pictures. Some of these fledgling efforts were printed in various ³underground² publications of the day: Two-Bit Comics (a weekly tabloid), the Los Angeles Free Press, and an early effort at self-publishing, The Little Swimmer.

Gradually he developed a number of serviceable drawing styles and became a full-time freelance cartoonist, doing work primarily for advertising agencies and public relations companies but also working on whatever projects came his way, such as student films and other collaborative art.

Eventually Woodring landed a salaried job in an L.A. animation studio where he worked on some of the worst cartoons this degraded planet has ever seen. In 1980 he self-published the first issue of his ³illustrated autojournal², JIM, containing comics, drawings and stories drawn from his indelible childhood experiences.

Eventually Woodring landed a salaried job in an L.A. animation studio where he worked on some of the worst cartoons this degraded planet has ever seen.

During 80¹s and 90¹s his work has been featured in many publications that deal with comics and culture, from the high-brow Kenyon Review and World Art Magazine to Francis Coppola's Zoetrope, as well as the Frank comics JIM was subsequently published as a 32-page magazine by Fantagraphics Books. Response was good enough to persuade Woodring to leave animation and embark on a career as a full-time cartoon artiste.

At present he is working on the fourth issue of "Frank", which will contain the second installment of a book-length epic (which will be published, when finished, as a black and white comic with color illustrations). He lives in Seattle with his

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