Josh Kirby

Ronald William "Josh" Kirby (27 November 1928–23 October 2001), was an English commercial artist born in Waterloo, on the outskirts of Liverpool, Merseyside. He was educated at the Liverpool City School of Art, where he acquired the nickname Josh, which comes from having his work compared to that of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The nickname stuck and Kirby was rarely called by his real name later.

Kirby painted film-posters, magazine and book covers. Creating a total of over 400 cover paintings, his personal preference was for science fiction jackets (for example see Robert Silverberg's Majipoor novels and Kirby's own "Voyage of the Ayeguy") and his work on the covers of Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" series of novels is well known. He also created the poster art for Monty Python's Life of Brian and Return of the Jedi. He worked almost exclusively in oils.

In 1991, Paper Tiger Books published a graphic album collecting some commercial and private works by Kirby, titled "In the Garden of Unearthly Delights".

Josh Kirby died unexpectedly, of natural causes, in his sleep at home in Shelfanger near Diss in Norfolk. He was 72.

External links

* [http://www.joshkirbyart.com/ Official Site]
* [http://www.lspace.org/art/joshkirby.html Josh Kirby at L-Space Web]
* [http://www.ansible.co.uk/misc/joshlist.html Josh Kirby bibliography]
* [http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/exhibitions/joshkirby/ 'Out of this world: the art of Josh Kirby' exhibition]

Notes