Quentin Blake

Quentin Blake was born in London in 1932. He has always made his living as an illustrator, as well as teaching for over twenty years at the Royal College of Art, where he was head of the Illustration department from 1978 to 1986. His first drawings were published in Punch while he was 16 and still at school. He continued to draw for Punch, The Spectator and other magazines over many years, while at the same time entering the world of children's books with A Drink of Water by John Yeoman in 1960. He is known for his collaboration with writers such as Russell Hoban, Joan Aiken, Michael Rosen, John Yeoman and, most famously, Roald Dahl. He has also illustrated classic books for adutls, including A Christmas Carol and Candide and created much-loved characters of his own, including Mister Magnolia and Mrs Armitage. Since the 1990s Quentin Blake has had an additional career as exhibition curator, curating shows in, among other places, the National Gallery, the British Library and the Musée du Petit Palais in Paris. In the last 20 years he has begun to make larger-scale work for hospitals and healthcare settings in the UK and France where his work can be seen in wards and public spaces; including (in 2011-12) a scheme for the whole of a new maternity hospital in Angers, France, and a wrap for an entire building in Kings Cross, London (2007). His landmark exhibition in 2020 at Hastings Contemporary, 'We Live in Worrying Times' featured a 30-foot mural titled 'The Taxi Driver' which he completed on site in under two days. Since 2019 he has embarked on fewer illustration commissions but has created more works for his own pleasure. Many are set in a world just beyond the everyday, and feature numerous imaginary characters and portraits.