About the artist
Chris is best known as the man behind the Scottish Cartoon Art Studio, or SCAS for short, the first and only business in the country that makes the skills of cartoonists available to the public and corporate sectors alike. Chris’s idea was simple, but insightful. He’d known cartoonists his entire life, and aspired to be one himself, but had observed that they generally operated in an invisible world: working alone, often from spare rooms at home. Many didn’t have the resources to advertise or promote their talent, struggling to find enough work but, equally, missing out on opportunities to tackle large-scale projects too big for one artist.
Worse, the cartoon art form was in crisis in Scotland. Stigmatised as puerile and “too commercial” by the fine art establishment, dismissed as kids’ stuff or flummery by many in business, cartooning had always fallen between two stools. Yet in other nations such as the USA, Japan and particularly Western Europe, cartoonists had won respect and a sense of validity for their work. Chris proposed to take the art form by the scruff of the neck. Unapologetically proud of cartooning, the SCAS ethos was to showcase and promote it as valid art as well as creative work with real financial worth. Chris assembled a team of some of the best cartoonists in the country, hungry for bigger and better things. On Friday the 30th of April 1999 the Studio opened for business. Within a fortnight, an assignment had been completed for the Walt Disney Company. It was only the first of many vindications for Chris.
With Chris at the tiller the Studio has changed location and formation a few times. However his leadership has been rock-steady and he’s backed by a hardcore of artists who’ve been with him from the very beginning. Also there at the start, offering support, were the East End Partnership and the Prince’s Trust. Things came full circle for Chris when, in the Studio’s third year, he received a visit from HRH The Prince of Wales himself, and Chris presented him with caricatures by the entire team. He’s told the work is hanging in a royal loo. Quite a compliment!
Over the last decade Chris’ reputation has only continued to grow and strengthen. Major authorities (Glasgow City Council, the Scottish Executive), corporations (Scottish Power, HBOS), newspapers (The Herald, The Scotsman), comics publishers as diverse as DC Thomson and Dark Horse and clients in places as far removed as Sweden and Texas have all used work from the Studio team. Tens of thousands of people have had their weddings, birthdays, Christmases or days out enlivened by the caricatures they’ve received from Chris and co. Holyrood Magazine cited Chris as the epitome of Scottish cartoon talent. His team has represented their country in France, Norway, Romania and the USA. Their work has entertained and informed, won plaudits and praise, broken new ground; the Scottish Cartoon Art Studio is at once a business operating at the very top of its field and a group of committed, creative artists who represent a new force in cartooning.
Beyond doubt the Studio’s greatest achievement to date has been the Fizzers caricature project. Conceived by Tommy Sommerville and inspired by the works of continental caricaturists like Sebastian Krüger and Patrice Ricord, Fizzers represents the most ambitious effort ever to raise the profile of the caricature art form in Scotland. Fizzers was formally launched in 2006 with a simultaneous book and exhibition. Fizzers: Famous Scottish Faces Caricatured was published- and can be bought online from- Mercat Press Ltd. Fizzers: the Alternative Portrait Gallery was shown at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and received some 15,000 visitors over its three months there. Chris contributed over forty caricatures to the show, seventeen of which can be seen in Mercat’s book.
On the Fizzers exhibition’s opening night Chris was presented with a piece of porcelain by Gerard Vandenbroucke, President of the Salon International du Dessin de Presse d’Humour et de la Caricature. It was the Studio’s pilgrimages to the Salon in earlier days that had led them to the work that directly inspired Fizzers, and with that gesture of friendship the first chapters in the Studio’s life began to draw neatly to their conclusion; it came a few weeks later when the Gallery acquired four Fizzers pieces, including one by Chris, as permanent additions to their collection. Chris had proven the truth of his initial idea and utterly refuted the critics; his Studio wasn’t just working, it was making unprecedented achievements. New challenges await as he takes both his business and his own development as an artist forward into the future.
Chris lives in Glasgow with his partner Andrena and their baby son Callan. He’s a football fan, and that’s reflected in some of the galleries on the site (in fact, Old Firm fans will already know his work- pin badges of his Rangers and Celtic caricatures of been on sale for years in Glasgow!). However he’s keen to share his unique take on movie legends, pop stars and a few surprise faces too! Chris has a stripped-down caricature technique, echoing the super-stylised caricatures of artists like Gibo. He uses pen and ink, coloured pencil and- increasingly- digital colour.
STOP PRESS! The dates and venue for the second major Fizzers exhibition have been successfully negotiated. Chris will make a formal announcement about it in the New Year!
The Fizzers brand is © Scottish Cartoon Art Studio