Leland Purvis is an illustrator currently working in pencil and watercolor on hot press paper, problem-solving using pictures to tell stories. His pieces leap onto the page in a frenetic, iterative process of investigation and discovery, collaborating with clients to evoke a visceral reaction in the viewer and unearth live, electric representations of real, emotional truth.

“The key themes at play for me are often the impossibility and inevitability of mortality, and the inescapable tensions which we all bear in everyday life. I love trying to find a moment which allows a window into a larger narrative.”

leland[dot]purvis[at]gmail.com

photo credit Mercy McNab

His major works in past years have been graphic novels, historical fiction, largely aimed at younger readers. An Eisner-Award and Ignatz nominee, he received a Xeric Grant for his self-published comics anthology, VÓX, and critical acclaim for PUBO, a creator-owned limited series published through Dark Horse Comics. He is the artist on several graphic novels published by GT-Labs, FirstSecond/ RoaringBrookPress/ MacMillan, Simon & Schuster/ Aladdin, Tor.com, and Abrams.

When not in the studio, Purvis spends his time digging out from under avalanches of books, making furniture, and struggling to maintain equanimity in the face of the rapid dissolution of civilization. He lives in Portland with his wife and daughter, who is a seventh-generation Oregonian.