You can find him at fourteen
in a provincial town’s public library.

The days have been grey.

In the reference section
surrounded by yesterday’s papers
are sleeping men in overcoats
who have come in
from the rain and the cold.

But he is not sleeping.

He is looking at a book and
at the same moment he is aware
that this book is altering
the course of his life and
the gathering dark.

This has never happened before.

He turns the pages of the book and
it has hundreds of colour illustrations
that are incredibly beautiful and
the title of the book is
The Life and Art of Vincent van Gogh

These two woodcuts originally appeared in the book Black Book Black I by Olivier Deprez & Miles O’Shea (Fremok Editions)

Olivier Deprez is a founding member of the influential avant-garde comic collective of Fremok. His books include Le Chateau and Lenin Kino. He has exhibited his work from Cuba to China and all points in between. A collection of his wood engravings have been acquired by Yale University. He lives in the South of France.

Miles O’Shea’s work, notably with Oliver Deprez and Pieter De Buysser, has been seen throughout Europe. A performance piece with artist Orla Barry was recently shown at Tate Modern UK and The Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. His debut novel is to be published in Spring 2014. He lives in Bruxelles, Belgium.

The two have worked together since 2006 in English and French and sometimes in neither. There is a Black Book Black retrospective to be held in 2014 at the Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image imprimée in Belgium.

For more information on the project please see: http://www.blackbookblack.net/