Marshall Arisman

EARLY LIFE

Arisman was born in Jamestown,

New York on December 21, 1937
where he grew up on a dairy farm. He
studied advertising art at the Pratt
Institute, graduating in 1960. He
received an Ida Gaskell Grant to
travel and study in Europe after
graduating. He completed military
service, then began his career as a In his illustration work, Arisman approaches each piece without
graphic designer, working for General making a distinction between commercial or fine art. The barrier is
Motors. one that he has been confronted with throughout his career: "the
fine art world stigmatizes people for illustrating [...] Every gallery
THEMES AND INFLUENCES tells me to quit illustration".

Violence and predation

are central themes in
many of Arisman's works.
His early work, Frozen
Images (1974), was a
reflection on "personal,
environmental, and
media-driven" violence.
Arisman's illustrations and
paintings are
characteristically dark,
expressionistic depictions
of figures in tortured
postures; torn flesh,
blood, and violent force
recur throughout his
works, depicted with
smeared brush strokes
against black shadowy
backgrounds. Other
works, such as Charging
Buffalo (2008), while
remaining expressionistic
in style, are less
menacing, and may be
interpreted as reflections
on primal connections with the environment and with a
regenerative life force. As influences, he has cited André François,
Goya, Velázquez, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and primitive art.
Brad Holland
EARLY LIFE
Born in Fremont, Ohio, Holland
began sending drawings to Walt
Disney, as well as the Saturday
Evening Post at the age of 15. At
17, after receiving a box of his
drawings back from Disney with a
Mickey Mouse masthead
rejection letter as well as
numerous rejection letters from
the Saturday Evening Post,
Holland traveled by bus to
Chicago where he found odd
jobs, including sweeping the floor
of a tattoo parlor. At age 20 the artist was hired by Hallmark in
Kansas City to illustrate books as a staff artist. Among the books he
would illustrate for Hallmark was A Christmas Carol by Charles
Dickens. In 1967 at age 23, Holland moved to New York City to
pursue a career as a full-time freelance illustrator.
ARTISTIC PHILOSOPHY
While the use of visual
metaphor is now taken for
granted in the world of
illustration, when Holland
entered the field this was not
the case. It was the accepted
standard of the time (1968)
that art directors dictated or
inferred what they wanted an
illustrator to create as a
finished assignment. When
Holland entered the
illustration field, his philosophy was entirely different than what his
predecessors had accepted as common practice. He vowed to never
render anyone else's idea but rather always find a better, more
personal solution to any illustration assignment he might accept.

Holland is quoted as saying he

(Suares) "gave us an opportunity
to redefine what graphic art
could be and do".

When Holland first worked with

Harrison Salisbury at the New
York Times he said "imagine
you’ve locked the writer in one
room and me in another and
given us both the same
assignment. The writer will give Barron Storey
you an article, I’ll give you a picture; you marry the two." Because of
Hollands' artistic philosophy of the time, the long-standing
assumption that commercial illustration should simply reinforce the
text was to quickly come to an end and his artistic legacy would be
largely founded on those historical milestones.

By the mid 1970s Hollands use of visual metaphor, known by this

point as "conceptual illustration", was so firmly established and
pervasive that Op-Ed art director Steven Heller said that only 25
percent of Op-Ed artists knew the content of the articles their work
was to accompany.

Dave McKean
David "Dave" McKean
(born 29 December 1963) is
an English illustrator,
photographer, comic book
artist, graphic designer,
filmmaker and musician.
His work incorporates
drawing, painting,
photography, collage,
found objects, digital art
and sculpture.
In 1986, he met author Neil Gaiman, with whom he has collaborated
on many projects since. Their first book, Violent Cases (1987), has
been printed in many editions worldwide, and was adapted for the
stage. They have also co-produced works such as Black Orchid
(1988), Signal to Noise (1990) for The Face magazine, and Mr.
Barron Storey (born 1940, Dallas, TX) is an American illustrator,
graphic novelist, and educator. He is famous for his
accomplishments as an illustrator and fine artist, as well as for his
career as a teacher. Storey has taught illustration since the 1970s
and currently is on the faculty of California College of the Arts in San
Francisco. He has also taught at San Jose State University and Pixar
Studios. He trained at Art Center in Los Angeles and under Robert
Weaver at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Barron Storey has been a commercial illustrator since the 1960s, and
his clients have included major magazines such as Boys' Life,
Reader's Digest, and National Geographic. His cover portraits for
Time of Howard Hughes and Yitzhak Rabin hang in the Smithsonian's
National Portrait Gallery. His giant painting of the South American
rain forest hangs in New York's American Museum of Natural
History, and a 1979 rendering of the space shuttle commissioned by
NASA, the first official painting ever done of it, hangs in the Air and
Space Museum on the National Mall.
As a book illustrator he as done cover illustrations for the Franklin
Library classics, War and Peace, The Good Earth and Stories by
Sinclair Lewis; as well as the covers of Fahrenheit 451 for Del Rey /
Ballantine; and, most famously, the 1980 reissue of Lord of the Flies.

Storey has also published many comics and graphic novels, including
The Marat/Sade Journals (Tundra),which was nominated for an
Eisner Award, Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman: Endless Nights
(DC/Vertigo) which won an Eisner, Tales from the Edge #1-10,
Barron Storey’s WATCH Magazine (Vanguard), and Life After Black
(Graphic Novel Art). Several of his students, including Dave McKean,
Scott McCloud, Dan Clowes, Peter Kuper, and Dan Brereton, have
become leading figures in the graphic novel field.

In Summer/Fall of 2015, Storey was forced into retirement by

California College of the Arts, the Oakland CA institution where he
had been teaching illustration for 30 years. Little is publicly known
about Storey's retirement, such as the terms of the arrangement, or
whether he will continue to work as a freelance illustrator.