Korky Paul - Biography

Biography

Paul was born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) in 1951 into a family of seven children and had what he describes as "a wild and privileged childhood" in the African Bushveld.

He went to Estcourt High School before graduating from Durban School of Art in 1972 and working at an advertising agency in Cape Town. In 1976 he travelled to Greece where he met James Watt, then working for a Greek publisher who commissioned Paul to illustrate a series of educational books teaching Greek children to speak the 'Queen's English'.

He then spent some time working in an advertising agency in London and Los Angeles, and then studied film animation under Jules Engel at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California. His first children's book was a pop-up called The Crocodile and the Dumper Truck published in 1980, with paper engineering by Ray Marshall.

In 1986 Paul met the editor, Ron Heapy, at Oxford University Press, who looked at his work and commissioned him to draw several pictures for a short book about a witch written by Valerie Thomas as part of OUP’s Reading Tree programme. Paul liked the story enough to turn it into a complete picture book. Although this was not strictly within Paul's brief, Heapy nevertheless presented it to the OUP delegates. The resulting book, Winnie the Witch, went on to win the Children's Book Award in 1987 and has since been published in over 10 languages. Paul's illustrations for this are full of visual jokes and witty detail. Since then he has illustrated a further nine Winnie the Witch titles that have sold over a million copies.

Three of Paul's picture books have been adapted for CD-ROM; The Fish Who Could Wish which won the European Multi-Media Award (EMMA) in 1995, Dragon Poems and Winnie the Witch.

His anarchic yet detailed work, executed with bright watercolour paint and pen and ink, is distinguished by its "wild characterisation". It has been compared to Tom and Jerry cartoons, and also to the artists Ronald Searle and Ralph Steadman. He has original artwork on display at The Mazza Collection Galleria, University of Findlay, Findlay, Ohio, USA. He lives in Oxford, Britain and is married to the artist Susan Moxley.

Describing the technical details of his work he says: "I use an Apple Mac, Schminke watercolours, Caran d’Ache pencil crayons (with electric sharpener), Saunders Waterford paper 190gm3, black kandahar and coloured inks with a dip pen, toothbrush, porcupine quills, and my trusty left hand."