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I am over 21 years of age.

I am a queer cartoonist and graphic artist. In the early 1990s I self-published various queer comix zines including the seminal queer teen zine Concerned Muthers and the highly acclaimed, intensely personal autobiographical mini-comic BoyCrazyBoy, and contributed to queer zines such as Boy Trouble, Holy Titclamps and Hormone Frenzy.

My strips have appeared in The Book of Boy Trouble and The Book of Boy Trouble Vol. 2, both edited by Robert Kirby and David Kelly and published by Green Candy Press.

I am also currently working on my PhD, a history of queer alternative cartoonists.

Inviting smiles, flaming skinheads, soulful eyes and a sexy punk gig at the edge of reality. The work of Sina Evil - a world just beyond our grasp
by Alexander Smith
30 August 2003

Taking more than a cursory glance at any of Sina’s work and I can’t fail to feel a larger-than-life dose of generosity of spirit. Sina gives his subjects their moment in the sun. He hands the chosen few their fifteen minutes. What have they done to warrant this gift? That’s up to us to decipher. What do I think? Isn’t the fact that at worst, we are keeping our heads above water in an illogical, frightening, serrated, non-stop world triumph enough? There’s more than a little desire in the mix too. Looking at them provokes in me a bittersweet yearning for something more than the world can offer, for virgin experiences, edginess and the unknown. Like the boy with the beer can, Sina’s work sports a smouldering gaze and an alluring smile, promising much. They invite you to the greatest punk gig there never was, to dance, drink and flirt, full of joy, love and pure, unrestrained sexual energy. Like a beneficent deity, Sina offers us a fully formed world (his own) in which to escape, with room for all, where all we ever hoped for is manifest.

It is not just wish-fulfilment though. In his fine art pieces Sina’s unwillingness to stick to one media or style, even within one picture creates a directness that is both charming and disarming. The combination of photography, painting and the incongruous use of everyday textures, make the work hard to define yet strangely immediate. This dichotomy of familiarity and confusion, erode the barrier between artwork and viewer in a way that single media cannot. The humanity of his vision and the mixture of the mundane and fantastic in the subject matter magnify this effect, which is best seen in his series of portraits that have the subject staring out at the viewer, holding and returning their gaze. In these pictures we see both the photographer’s realism, blended with the painter’s romanticism. These works are mostly based on photographs, and have the added dimension of the painter piggy backing his gaze onto the subject’s, doubling the intimacy. Part of the fun and beauty of these pictures is the blurriness of these boundaries. Not knowing for sure which bits have been tweaked. Of course, unless he’s been going to some really fun clubs, it’s obvious that the dragon-ladies and burning hearts in some of his works are fictions. Or are they? Maybe Sina is just translating what he sees into a language that the rest of us will understand.