Thomas Woodruff

Vito Schnabel Gallery and Fantagraphics will host a book signing and launch party for Francis Rothbart!: The Tale of a Fastidious Feral, drawn and composed by Thomas Woodruff, on Friday, October 28 from 6-8pm. Books will be available for sale on a first come, first serve basis. For the event and the following day, October 29th, over 300 drawings and paintings from the project will be on view in the gallery.

Francis Rothbart! follows a feral child who is raised by magpies and other creatures and is repeatedly struck by lightning. Because of the phenomena, the child develops eccentric talents, which he then abuses, leading to his ultimate destruction by the same natural world that once nurtured him. Written mostly in rhymed verse and lushly drawn and painted, each scene in Francis’s picaresque saga is a verbal and visual feast that transport the reader to a mythical pastoral world. Thomas Woodruff’s imagery recalls the fictive gardens of a paradise lost that echoes somewhere deep in all our souls. Woodruff’s debut book is a “graphic opera” unlike anything ever created, a tour de force of words and images in harmony that will be one of the most talked-about books of the decade.

In his long, varied, and eccentric career Thomas Woodruff has had many solo exhibitions of his paintings; created hundreds of illustrations for books, periodicals, and television; designed for the opera; curated gallery exhibitions. Woodruff is Chair Emeritus of the Illustration and Cartooning Departments at the School of Visual Arts, where he held the post for 20 years. Francis Rothbart! is his first work of comic art.