Патрик Вудрофф: Художник фантастических миров

English artist
the artist

Patrick James Woodroffe (27 October 1940 – 10 May 2014) was an English artist, etcher and drawer, who specialised in fantasy science fiction artwork, with images that bordered on the surreal. His achievements include several collaborations with well known musicians, two bronze sculptures displayed in Switzerland and numerous books.

Woodroffe was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, in 1940, the son of an electrical engineer. In 1964 he graduated in French and German at the University of Leeds, before going on to exhibit his first showing of pen and ink drawings, Conflict, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. However he did not become a full time artist until 1972, the year in which he gave an exhibit of his paintings, etchings and related works at the Covent Garden Gallery in London. This was followed by an exhibition of book jacket and record sleeve paintings in 1976, which appeared at Mel Calman's Workshop Gallery in London. That year the children's book Micky's New Home was published with illustrations by Woodroffe. In 1978 he mounted an exhibition of more than two hundred works at the historic Piece Hall in Halifax. The illustrations were shown at the World Science Fiction Convention, at Brighton's Metropole Hotel in 1979. In 1976, his illustrated book The Adventures of Tinker the Hole Eating Duck was published by Dragon's World. The same year saw Woodroffe creating art (including representations of a Snark a subject traditionally taboo for an artist to do) for composer Mike Batt's 1984 musical adaptation of Lewis Carroll's poem The Hunting of the Snark.