Born in Maidenhead in 1963, David McKean has developed an international reputation as an award-winning illustrator, photographer, comic book artist, graphic designer, filmmaker and musician.
His collaborations with the writer, Neil Gaiman, have produced some of the most influential graphic novels in recent years, including Violent Cases (1987), a Black Orchid mini-series (1988), Signal to Noise (1992) and Mr Punch (1994).
He produced the Batman graphic novel, Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (1989) and in 1995 he wrote and illustrated Voodoo Lounge for The Rolling Stones, to tie in with their album of the same name.
Dave McKean’s musings on art, life, death and creation are collected in the groundbreaking novel Cages (1998), about artists and creativity, which received several awards for best graphic novel.
He has created books of illustrations documenting his travels: Postcards from Vienna (2006), Postcards from Barcelona (2007), Postcards from Paris (2008) and Postcards from Brussels (2009).
McKean has collaborated with Neil Gaiman on two children’s picture books, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish (1998) and The Wolves in the Walls (2003), and illustrated Gaiman’s children’s novels, Coraline (2002) and the award winning novel The Graveyard Book (2008).
In 2008 McKean collaborated with Heston Blumenthal on The Big Fat Duck Cookbook which won the James Beard Photography/ Illustration award. He created six images for Royal Mail’s Mythical Creatures collection released in 2009.
He has created well over a hundred CD covers for a diverse range of artists including Michael Nyman, Alice Cooper, Bill Bruford and John Cale, and hundreds of book and comic covers.
Dave McKean has directed five short films and three feature films. He was a conceptual artist on the films, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” (2004) and “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” (2005).
His most recent projects include a science book for children, The Magic of Reality (2011), in collaboration with the evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins.
