John Harris (artist)

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John Harris (born July 29, 1948 in London , England ) is an English painter and illustrator who is best known for his science fiction illustrations. His images have been used as book covers for editions of many science fiction writers, including Isaac Asimov , Frederik Pohl , Ben Bova , Orson Scott Card , John Scalzi and Jack Vance .

life and work

Harris began painting at the age of 14 and attended art school in Luton at the age of 16 . After he acquired the basic knowledge there, he went to Exeter College in 1967 to study painting. He graduated in 1970 and traveled to India for six years to study Transcendental Meditation . After returning to England in 1976, he began working on monumental works in terms of scale and size. Many of his pictures primarily show planets, spaceships, gigantic cities and technical structures that sometimes take on the character of landscapes. Despite his often impressionistic painting style, Harris' pictures convey the impression of realism. In the late 1970s, he joined the Young Artists talent agency, which also represented other science fiction illustrators such as Chris Foss , Jim Burns and Peter Elson . From that point on, he specialized in large-scale commissions such as Philips and Royal Dutch Shell , as well as science fiction book illustrations, including Jack McDevitt's 2005 novel Seeker ( The Search ), which won a Nebula Award . His painting MASS: The Building of FTL1 was used by Psygnosis for the 1990 computer game Awesome .

In the 1980s, Harris was hired by Sinclair Research to illustrate the covers of the home computer manuals for the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum .

In 1984 Harris was invited by NASA to the Kennedy Space Center to watch and paint a space shuttle launch. This painting is now part of the Smithsonian Collection .

In May 2000 a collection of his work was published by Paper Tiger Books, entitled Mass , and in May 2014 the illustrated book The Art of John Harris was published by Titan Books.

In 2007, the animated film studio Rainmaker Entertainment Harris hired to assist in the work on the film Nix as away - from planet Earth ( Escape from Planet Earth , 2013) of The Weinstein Company participate.

John Harris lives in Devon , England, is married with two children.

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personal data
SURNAME Harris, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English illustrator and painter
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH London , England