Drawing insight: sequential art narrative as reflexive analysis in hermeneutic phenomenology

This article offers a reflexive methodological account of incorporating sequential art narrative as an analytic adaptation within hermeneutic phenomenology. Developed during a phenomenological study of acute care nurses’ experiences of providing existential support to patients facing life-limiting illness, sequential art emerged as a response to meanings that exceeded straightforward linguistic articulation. Rather than functioning as data or illustration, drawing operated as a reflexive analytic practice embedded within writing and rewriting, foregrounding temporality, spatiality, relational positioning, and affect. This article presents an adapted hermeneutic spiral to illustrate how sequential art narrative functioned alongside textual analysis and epistemic reflexivity, rendering interpretive decisions visible and accountable. The findings demonstrate that attending to researchers’ epistemic orientations, including visual ways of knowing, can strengthen rigor by enhancing transparency in how interpretation unfolds. Sequential art narrative is proposed not as a method, but as a disciplined reflexive heuristic responsive to hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry.