born in seattle 1988, aidan koch is a contemporary artist exploring sequential art. she attended the pacific NW college of art in Portland, oregon from which she received her BFA. she is the author of three books known for their subtle approach to storytelling. she finds ways of exploring a narrative whilst still challenging the viewer. Using limited text and unconventional layout, there is plenty of space for the viewer to interpret her work in many ways. leaving intentional gaps and uncompleted illustrations, she finds a way of creating a narrative providing as little obvious information as possible.

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There is something very therapeutic about her work, the drawings are paced slowly and capture a small moment in time. the lines and colours are soft and delicate creating an atmosphere of calm drawing attention to things you might not have noticed in a typical comic. The subject matter is mostly people or selected parts of them, along with lots of natural setting i think this ties back to a moment of thought or pause. Alongside this, her use or language is complementary to the setting and creates a back and forth relationship between text and image.

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she talks about how instead of single image based illustrations she uses multiple scenes in a composition as it opens up the opportunity for suspense, tension, and contradictions. I think that this kind of approach could be really useful for me when talking about a dichotomy, i am aiming to discuss both sides of receiving nurture and lacking it. when talking about parent child experiences there are also many varied feelings towards it, so using this kind of process would allow me to contain multiple truths instead of present one portrayal. Something i also like about koch’s work is that they often present a question instead of trying to directly provide an obvious story. This pondering of thought is something i would like to incorporate into my work.