BC Artist and Author Creates Kids' Books that Focus on Diversity

Roz Maclean is a wonderful artist who hails from the Comox Valley. She has turned her passion and vision into a successful line of children's books that teach inclusion and diversity. www.rozmaclean.com 

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

Evan:

welcome back to DDA encouraging abilities podcast. I'm your host. DDA communications manager Evan Kelly, today, we're talking with Roz McLean now Roz is a local award winning author of children's books that deal a lot with diversity, communications, emotions and inclusion, which, of course, is right up Didier's alley. Roz is also a visual artist and illustrator and an educator in the Comox Valley here in British Columbia. She likes to investigate ideas of human nature, diversity, relationships, community, mental health, interconnection and the natural world through an anti oppressive and LGBTQ and inclusive feminist lens. They've written a couple of books illustrated even more, in addition to having a portfolio of artwork that covers abstract ink drawings animals, one set of works called insufficient arts art, rather which focuses on British Columbians with disabilities. That and more can be found at Roz mclean.com and I'll say this a couple of times, it's Roz with NAC mclean.com

Roz. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Roz:

Yeah, thanks so much for having me now.

Evan:

I always begin my podcast with you know, people I've never met before. So tell me a little bit about a little bit about yourself?

Roz:

Well, yeah, I'm a children's book author, illustrator, and I'm on Vancouver Island in the Comox Valley on the traditional territories of the Comox people. I have a dog. I live here with my husband.

I like to go in the forest, yeah, I don't know. It's, it's, it's funny to try to sum yourself up.

Evan:

I mean, you, you obviously do a lot of art. Art is your is that you're like, the number one passion in your life.

Roz:

Ah, I think, I mean, it's definitely been a common thread throughout my life, and it's funny, I guess when your passion becomes like your job, because it is my passion, and now it's also my job. So it doesn't always feel so passionate, but it's been a really common, consistent, yeah, thing in my life that I've always turned to and enjoyed doing is that something you studied in the past,

I'm really lucky that I grew up in a really, like, arts and rich environment with my family. My parents are both artists, and my mom worked at like, arts umbrella when I was growing up, so do have classes there. And I grew up in North van as well, and they had, like, lots of enrichment stuff going on in their school district. And then I also went to Emily Carr and SFU for a little bit. I didn't finish up degrees there, but I was there for a little while. And then, yeah, and then I'll just take classes, like, here and there. It took, like, infection course one time. So I'm always learning, yeah, and because, it's because

Evan:

I look at your art on your your portfolio on Instagram and stuff like that. And it's, it's, it's, you run a lot of different styles, and it seems like quite a bit of different mediums. I just love your your ballpoint pen work. It's really, really detailed and very realistic. So you've got some obviously, influence from all over the place, and not just one particular, particular medium or style.

Roz:

Yeah, yeah. All over the place is a really great way to describe it. That's how I feel a lot of the time. I'm very much like, Oh, what about this? They're like, Ah, I could do that. And it's very like, kind of counterbalancy, like, I'll work on something really detailed for a while, then I'll be like, Oh man, I really need to, like, feel like I want to do something more loose and abstract. So yeah, all over the place is a great, great way.

Evan:

You mentione