The romantic escapades of insufferable creatives, as drawn by artist Marie Jacotey

In Paradise, a comic commissioned for Studio Pilar’s Cocktails magazine, the Paris-born artist Marie Jacotey illustrated the Paradise cocktail via the story’s context. “The writer is in a paradise environment – by the sea, with a lovely, sexy looking waitress – talking nonsense about work that seems to somehow support him. I wanted to play on the cliché of the ‘artist lifestyle,’ no strings attached, and living for the moment – wherever and whenever he wants because he is his own boss,” says Marie. “He is a caricature of what we, or at least I, see as the embodiment of the insufferable creative.”

Marie’s drawings form a sort-of archaeological investigation into narrative structure, and the ways stories shift with the uncovering of unexpected associations and twists. The dialogue of her comic strips are often more snatches of conversation than novellas: “My work often has this snapshot quality, describing a suspended moment, leaving the viewer to make up the fuller narrative,” she says.

Her work often has the atmosphere of teen drama, particularly the coming-of-age romances of the 80s. Although it’s not a conscious decision, Marie says: “I recognise this sort of teenage vibe oozing from my drawings… I guess when depicting emotions in a rather formulated way I feel the need to push it to the extreme. To make it funnier and and reveal the cringing aspects of something too pathetic and sad. This ‘over-expressiveness’ can give the overall impression of youth, when we experience things for the first time, in full.”