About “bear”

Bear is a coming of age story in which Lou, a librarian, is sent to a house in a northern Canadian wilderness to archive the estate of an eccentric colonel. In the beginning of the novel, Lou is passive and discontent. This begins to change when she forms a sexual relationship with a bear who lives in the colonel’s abandoned home.

For this book cover, I needed to decide which aspect of the novel is more compelling: the sexual intimacy for which it is infamous or the emotional journey towards self-actualization? Through sketches and written notes, I came to the conclusion that while the shocking salacious content may have drawn in audiences when the book was first published in 1976, this novel is a Canadian classic because of its unique take on the bildungsroman narrative.

With this in mind, I decided to build on a charcoal sketch I did of a female hand holding onto a bear paw. Holding hands is an intimate gesture, however, the female hand is drawn on top and gripping an indifferent bear paw to show both Lou’s growing agency and the one-sidedness of the inter-species relationship. The tree trunk in the background indicates the novel takes place in the wilderness with the title rendered to evoke lovers carving their initials in tree bark as a declaration of love.