Tom Gauld is an illustrator and comic book artist. He grew up in Scotland and now lives and works in London. He has written and illustrated the comics ‘Guardians of the Kingdom’ and ‘Three very small Comics’ as well as producing comic stories and illustrations for various publications including The Guardian, The Independent and The New Yorker. He runs Cabanon Press with Simone Lia, with whom he created the comics ‘First’ and ‘Second’ which were republished in 2003 as ‘Both’ by Bloomsbury.

Tom was chosen to take part in our 'Watch This Space' exhibition by Angus Hyland, a partner at Pentegram and author of several books on illustration.

The direct simplicity of Tom Gauld’s illustrations belie an extremely sophisticated approach to storytelling.

The clever interplay between the minimal dialogue and Gauld’s stark black and white pictures with their economy of action, provoke our own participation in the unfolding of the story.

There is often very little variation in the sequences – in one story, characters on the horizon barely seem to move throughout the narrative - yet this is what gives the work such a strong impact; there is a stillness to it, ironic, considering the epic and action-packed nature of the majority of sequential illustration. The characters Tom creates are not your traditional comics fare; often little more than stick men, with no discernible expression – these innocents are imbued with a very real humanity.

Tom’s work exemplifies a new spirit in narrative illustration – it is work which illuminates the minutiae and subtleties of ordinary life and which can challenge us to pause and be still ourselves."

– Angus Hyland

Angus Hyland is a partner at the renowned Petegram design agency and is the curator of ‘Picture This’, a British Council touring exhibition featuring the work of contemporary London-based illustrators, and ‘Ballpoint’, an exhibition featuring works by fifty artists created with or inspired by the traditional ballpoint pen. He is also the editor of ‘Pen and Mouse: Commercial Art and Digital Illustration’, and ‘Hand to Eye: Contemporary Illustration,’ published by Laurence King in 2001 and 2003 respectively.
Angus Hyland at the Pentegram blog