ARTIST BIO

A Tale of Art and Exploration

Born and raised in the Midwest, Terrill Sullivan moved to Southern California with his family at age 12. Picking up the sport of surfing through high school helped him navigate the transition from teen to young adulthood. He went on surf adventures to Central California, Baja, mainland Mexico and Hawaii in his youth. From owning small sign shop in North County San Diego to working as a graphic designer on anon-profit's production team, Terrill found time to follow a passion for creating visual art.  After finishing a series of surf paintings inspired by his travels, he searched for the next project to dive into.  

A lover of comics and illustrated novels from a young age, he found his muse in Catherine Alexander’s excellent book on the 1914 Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition (see here).  It became the inspiration for the graphic novel series, Endurance. Taking place at the start of World War 1, the explorer Ernest Shackleton and his rugged crew faced shipwreck on the merciless ice of Antarctica.  Grasping the magnitude of the trials they endured, and to survive without a loss of life was astonishing. The tale captures the timeless qualities of courage and commitment—virtues of true heroism.  Terrill explains his motives for the graphic novel: "I wanted to explore what a young man onboard the Endurance would have experienced, learning from these wise and tough veterans of sea and ice. I always thought the Shackleton story as one of the most epic adventures ever undertaken, and the fact that it occurred during a time of war, made it an even more compelling." 

There are different themes running through Endurance: Book One, The Frozen Keep and Endurance: Book Two, The Beckoning Shore; The coming-of-age of the main character, Jack Robinson; the harrowing scenes of his brother in far-away France fighting in the trenches of World War One; The battles of the young teen, Leah, with her role in a male dominated culture as she struggles to save the whales from slaughter in the beginnings of the Industrial Age; Shackleton's lonely battles with doubt as he navigates the dangers of the treacherous seas and of the crushing ice; and the personal demons plaguing Jacob Marlow, Jack's nemesis on board the Endurance.  All set in the overarching story of an expedition largely forgotten in the midst of a world war.