Artist Guest of Honour
LES EDWARDS was born in 1949 in Walthamstow, East London. He began his illustration career immediately on leaving the
notorious Hornsey College of Art in 1972. In the years that followed he became a stalwart of the UK illustration scene,
acknowledged for both his versatility and his professionalism. He has worked for all the major UK publishing houses
and for many in the US, and his work has also encompassed advertising, gaming, record and CD covers, and movie posters.
He has illustrated two graphic novels based on stories by Clive Barker—Son of Celluloid, about an ambulatory cancer, and Rawhead Rex, which tells of the adventures of a baby-eating monster and has absolutely no connection to his own views on children. Both books were critically acclaimed.
Although best known for his fantasy and horror images, he has in fact worked in a variety of genres and still seeks to do as wide a variety of work as possible. His paintings are to be found in private collections in both Europe and the US.
While he began his career working in gouache, Les swiftly abandoned this medium in favour of oil paint, which he found to be both more flexible and subtler. He applies the paint to a smooth, gessoed board and uses various media to aid rapid drying. He does not use an airbrush—an instrument that he describes as "the work of the devil". There is a good deal of preparatory work involved in the form of drawing, not only to establish a composition but, also to define character, if that is necessary. His fascination with the human figure and portraiture clearly permeates all his work and he pursues this interest with regular attendance at a life class. Les seeks to create pictures with an immediate eye-catching impact, often eschewing the ever more elaborate style of some of his contemporaries in favour of simpler, more direct images. This is an approach emphasised by his formal compositional sense.
In recent years Les has also taken to painting under the pseudonym "Edward Miller" in order to do a different kind of work and use a more romantic style. This work has also become popular, and Les now pursues both careers with equal enthusiasm.
| Art by Les Edwards | ||
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In 1995 he was Artist Guest of Honour at the World Science Fiction Convention. He has been voted Best Artist by the British Fantasy Society on seven occasions, and has been nominated in that category every year since 1994. He has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Artist five times (his alter-ego, Edward Miller, won it in 2008). He has also been nominated for five Chesley Awards.
When he is not chained to his easel, his spare time is taken up with half-building plastic model kits and allowing them to gather dust in an appropriately artistic fashion, playing the guitar in a uniquely unmusical manner, and fencing—a sport at which his enthusiasm is surpassed only by his almost supernatural lack of ability.
Les lives with his wife Val just outside London, England.
| Art by Edward Miller | |
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| Art by Les Edwards (above left to right) |
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• The 5th Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories edited by Mary Danby
• Best New Horror edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell • Son of Celluloid by Clive Barker • Brotherly Love and Other Tales of Faith and Knowledge by David Case • Summer Chills: Strangers In Stranger Lands edited by Stephen Jones • British Invasion edited by Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon and James A. Moore |
| Art by Edward Miller (above left to right) |
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• Phantoms of Venice edited by David A. Sutton
• The Scalding Rooms by Conrad Williams • This Is Now by Michael Marshall Smith |
External Links
Les Edwards's Website
Edward Miller's Website