Special edition: Graphic Novel about Jacob Lawrence

Comic artist Rashad Doucet has created a graphic novel about the life of Jacob Lawrence especially for the exhibition at Kunsthal KAdE.

Rashad Doucet is an American illustrator, cartoonist, and professor of sequential art at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). His creative journey began at an early age, when his grandmother gave him paper and chalk during church services to keep him quiet. In the evenings, she told him stories about superheroes, which sparked his imagination and fueled his love of stories.

What attracts Doucet in sequential art is freedom: the medium allows him to combine different art forms and experiment with styles, while the story always remains central. His work is colorful, expressive, and strongly influenced by modernism and Japanese animation from the 1990s. Emotion and representation are at the heart of his work. Doucet wants to tell stories that are universal and relatable to everyone, while also offering representation for children and young people who grew up like him, to show that they too can play the leading role.

Creating a graphic novel about the life of Jacob Lawrence was a new and meaningful challenge for Doucet. He had to distill Lawrence's rich life and extensive body of work into just 24 images. Although their styles differ, Doucet felt a deep personal and cultural connection to Lawrence through their shared Southern roots, religious backgrounds, and experiences as African-American artists. Instead of imitating Lawrence's style, Doucet offered a personal interpretation full of color, emotion, and themes such as love, hope, and resilience.

Doucet hopes that readers of the graphic novel will recognize the significance of Lawrence's legacy. He wants to show how Lawrence's work reflects both the struggles and resilience of the African American community, and how it contributes to a broader and more inclusive vision of America—a vision that remains relevant and important today.

So, are you still looking for a nice gift for the holidays? The graphic novel can be viewed in the exhibition and is available in the KAdEShop!

The graphic novel is available in both Dutch and English.