Walking into Ginette Lapalme’s home studio for the first time is like entering the kind of treasure trove of wonders you dream about as a child. Bright splashes of colour cover nearly every paintable surface and cat and dog figurines are organized neatly into a cubic wall unit with Lapalme’s sculpted jewellery creations hanging just above them. Immediately I tell her I wanted to write about her because her work just makes me happy. “Good,” she says with a smile, “I’m glad that comes through.” Lapalme, who has self-published her cartoonish artwork in Wowee Zonk, a “contemporary comic book anthology” created by Lapalme along with friends Patrick Kyle and Chris Kuzma, has also had her artwork featured in such mainstream publications as The Walrus and Vice. OTM sat down with her to chat about her beginnings, her inspirations and what it’s like to be a happy artist.

Kimberly Rupnarain: When did you become interested in art and illustrating?

Ginette Lapalme: For as long as I can remember I’ve always been really interested in cartoons and illustrated books. I was always drawing and I think this really was thanks to my mom, who has always been interested in crafts and hoped to foster the same interest in me. It wasn’t until Grade 12 when I was trying to decide what to do with my life that I realized, ‘Oh, you can actually be an illustrator for a living; you can actually make art,’ so I applied to OCAD and that was pretty much the start of it.

KR: Do you remember your first illustration ever?
GL: I honestly couldn’t tell you my first. My mother has kept so many of my drawings; she has one of a face I drew which she has dated ‘Ginette, 2 years old’. One of the earliest I remember that gives me a chuckle still is of a mouse sitting on an elephant. The elephant only has three legs but I wasn’t yet 4 years old at the time, so I think it’s excusable. You also have to illustrate so much when you’re a kid. We used to have so many homework assignments asking us to draw what our family did on the weekend.

I also remember making my first comic which wasn’t really mine because I copied a short story from an Archie’s comic, but I re-drew it and translated it into French and instead of Archie characters, I drew my school logo which was a piranha. So it became a comic about piranhas who go to an elementary school.

KR: What are some of your greatest inspirations for illustrations?
GL: Probably childhood most of all: everything that I liked when I was a kid, like cartoons, storybooks and bright colours. Anything that is cheerful, I try to put that in my work. I also have been really interested in adding religious undertones in my work recently, but this also stems from childhood. I went to school through the Catholic system from kindergarten to Grade 12. I’m really intrigued by Illuminated manuscripts and bizarre medieval illustrations.

KR: Do you have a favourite piece of self-created artwork?
GL: One of the prints that I made that I still love is in my bedroom;

it’s a print of The King Cat. It’s paper I dyed multi-coloured in my bathtub in my old apartment and it has a layer of black silkscreen over top of it. Some people have pointed out that it’s reminiscent of those projects kids make where they scratch away at black wax crayon to reveal rainbow effects underneath. It wasn’t my intention but it has that aesthetic. It was part of my thesis at OCAD, so it’s probably three years old now but I still really am rather proud of how it turned out.

KR: What projects are you currently working on?
GL: Patrick [Kyle], [Chris] Kuzma and I are always working on Wowee Zonk, and our fourth issue is in the pre-works. We’ve yet to fully flesh out the ins and outs of the upcoming issue but we’re very glad to be working with Anne Koyama again from Koyama Press. I’ve also been working on a small illustrated story-book with my friend Jason Bergsieker on the subject of castrated dogs. It’s a pretty silly project that’s been incredibly funny to draw for. I’ve also been working on a lot of 3D works like beaded jewelry, brooches and figurines lately.

KR: Can you tell us a little more about the jewelry?
GL: I suppose part of me felt I needed a break from painting. I got a hold of a lot of Sculpey at some point and started making some things with it and really enjoyed it. It’s such a neat way to make a character come to life a little more. It’s been fun to work with material that is malleable and I like the idea of making work that people can wear.

KR: What is it about illustrating that you love so much?
GL: I guess just being able to visualize what I’m imagining. To show other people the images that are swirling around in my head. I love playing with shapes and creating joyful and curious characters. I can’t see myself really doing anything else; it’s what I enjoy the most and I get so much out of making things whether through drawing, painting or crafting. I’m so thankful that I can get away with devoting so much of my time to making things.