Captain Jackman

Blai Drawson is an author/illustrator and painter, educated in the Drawing & Painting Department at the Ontario College of Art, 1963-67. He began his career illustrating reading material for children via educational publishing, during a period of living for five years in California and one year in New York City.

By 1974, he shifted his efforts exclusively in the direction of editorial illustration—magazines, mostly. He had much success in that field, enjoying the freedom of creativity it allowed, appreciating the stimulus of working with many of the prominent magazines of the time, and visually interpreting the words of writers and thinkers whom he respected. These were such prominent authors as Jorge Luis Borges and Isaac Bashevish Singer.

Some of the magazines he worked for on a freelance basis include:

• The New Yorker
• Esquire
• Rolling Stone
• The New York Times magazine
• GQ
• Playboy

For several years he did a comics page, The Building (with words by the late Broadway playwright, Wendy Wasserstein), for a women’s magazine, New York Woman.

He has twice been honored with a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators, New York. His paintings have been exhibited in France, Italy, and Japan, as well as in numerous traveling exhibitions throughout the US and Canada.

Since the year 2000, he has elected to do less editorial work, focusing more on book illustration and his first love, painting. His paintings fall into three distinct periods, and are reflective of their media:

• 1975-1983: Watercolour
• 1983-2012: Acrylic
• 2012-present: Acrylic and pastel

The works have steadily evolved into a looser, less descriptive, more abstractive style.

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