

Now the 52 illustrations are the backbone of her powerful graphic memoir called In-Between Days. She drew to plumb her fears, memories and 2 a.m.

Soon the longtime painter began creating comics about her life as a cancer patient. Her pencil and sketch pad became constant companions. The symbolism only struck her much later. Incurable.ĭuring the worst moments trying quiet her churning mind, she pulled out her photographs and her sketch pad and began drawing the flowers she’d seen on the tundra, one after another. In the prime of her life, she was suddenly dealing with words no one should ever have to hear. By the time doctors found the disease, after months of debilitating pain and misdiagnoses, it had spread to her bones. “Their resilience against the odds, the survival of these tiny beautiful things, above the treeline, where’s there’s no protection against the wind … they’re everywhere,” she recalls.įour months later at the age of 37, Harrison was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. In the Arctic a couple of summers ago, Teva Harrison saw narwhals, icebergs and a polar bear eating a seal on an ice floe.īut it was the flowering tundra that the Toronto artist and writer couldn’t stop photographing, bursts of colourful plants blanketing the barren landscape.
