From First to Last

photo etchings

I discovered my love of Damon Runyon’s witty, insightful stories when studying Graphic Design at the Royal College of Art. I have always been a huge fan of the genre Film Noir and reading On Broadway by Runyon, sparked off a series of multi layered silkscreens in response to some of his short stories.

My starting point was to produce a set of collaged images that I then carefully replicated layer by layer in silkscreen separations. They were all monochromatic and some prints ended up having over 10 separations each representing a layer of tracing paper or surface. The resulting set of 4 prints, were the start of my illustration life and my subsequent career spanning over 20 years as a professional illustrator.

Recently, I started to think about these beginnings and how I might be able to reinterpret those themes and ideas and extend them to include other printmaking techniques. Photo etching intrigued me and a return, 20 years later, to the atmospheric world of Damon Runyon provided me with the perfect subject matter.

The images in this gallery draw their inspiration from From First to Last, Runyon’s affectionate celebration of New York’s underworld of the 1930’s.