Works for Wild Words
Sue Coe, the great engraver and activist whose grotesque, expressionist language has succeeded in capturing the brutality with which humans treat animals as a deeply dehumanising behaviour, a moral and physical deformity, has created four new works especially for Octopus. The works do not merely illustrate the corresponding texts in the issue but offer Sue Coe’s unique visual and ethical eye to their subject matter.
Sue Coe, work for Pure Fiction, 2025.
Courtesy of the artist
Sue Coe, work for , The Sacrifice, 2025.
Courtesy of the artist
Sue Coe, work for Dogs Beyond the Sofa, 2025.
Courtesy of the artist
Sue Coe, work for Foods that Don’t Bite Back, 2025.
Courtesy of the artist
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sue Coe is a UK-born American artist and illustrator who works primarily in drawing, printmaking and illustrated books and comics. Her highly political work continues the tradition of social protest art. Her commentary on political events and social injustice are published in newspapers, magazines and books, and her work has been shown internationally in both solo and group exhibitions and has been collected by various international museums. Much of her work is focused on animal rights and animal abuse and she has published several illustrated books on the subject: Sheep of Fools: A Song Cycle for Five Voices (2005), gives a broad history of sheep farming, highlighting the abuses of the animals for human gain; Cruel (2012), is a continued, critical look at the animal industry, built upon her ground-breaking book Dead Meat (1996). The Animals’ Vegan Manifesto (2016) features close to 100 original woodcuts and linocuts advocating for animal abolition, while Zooicide: Seeing Cruelty, Demanding Abolition (2018), uses original drawings and linocuts to show why Zoos should be abolished.