Chats with artists in their dens always fascinates me. Today I visited Stanley Chow in his den in Didsbury. The usual cacophony of images, collected items and work in progress. And there’s usually a story that makes me smile. Today was no exception. 

 

Stan told me about his work for the New York Times and how he is surely the only person in Manchester to be ‘cancelled’ by Donald Trump. Yes, this was 2015-2016, but the illustration he produced for the cover of one of the finest newspapers in the world apparently infuriated The Donald. I hope it makes you smile. It made me smile. Strangely most of the work he did for the New Yorker dried up instantly, along with a successful 6 or 7 years of projects working for many New York publications.  I wonder why?

 

So, we delved into Stan’s progression into being a renowned illustrator in the Manchester scene and beyond. He told me that at school he was able to capture lifelike portraits of fellow pupils in just a few strokes. “They were my shield,” he tells me with a smile. “I was a good drawer.” And so this led him into a foundation course in illustration at Man Met. On completion he wanted to get away and moved to Swindon to study. “Swinton?” I queried. “No Swindon. I had lots of mates in London and figured that Swindon was close enough, but it was actually forty quid on the train. I managed two years there before high-tailing back to Manchester, where I found an agent. That was about 1996. In 2006 I produced a ‘fake’ poster for American duo The White Stripes and posted it on MySpace. Their agent asked me to stop selling it…but said that Jack and Meg would like to work with me. So, half a result. They asked me to design a USB stick as a way of distributing their final album Icky Thump. It was nominated for a Grammy Award – for the best limited-edition packaging - and set me off on the American trail.”

 

Stan had always pursued the idea of working in America and the following years were filled with illustrations for New Yorker, Time and the Washington Post. But the crash of 2008 hit him hard for the first time and work dried up. At that time social media was less than nascent, but he posted some of his images on Tumblr. “I think I could see the power of the medium early on. I saw it as a curated platform, rather than ‘random’ and I posted caricatures of Wayne Rooney and George Clooney. Although I was advised by an art director in the USA to soften the images. They looked too aggressive – they looked too mean! I was soon commissioned to produce all the images for the TFGM travel card and then the Chinese New Year. One project lasted 10 years and the other 12 to fit with the Chinese lunar cycle. Then Gary Neville asked me to produce an exhibition of illustrations for Hotel Football. It was to be for 3 months…but they’re still up there!” 

 

Stan told me that Brexit and Donald Trump’s election hit him hard again. But around 2007 a commercial printer/distributor had offered him 5% royalty on sales of posters of his images. Pause for thought. Why not buy a decent printer, illustrate, print and distribute images himself. A studio in the centre of Manchester (and on to Didsbury, where he is based now) and he was up and running to being the ubiquitous Stanley Chow that everybody now knows. And from upsetting Donald Trump all those years ago, his images of Andy Burnham have become iconic in recent months. Was there ever an illustrator that produced the definitive image of a British Prime Minister?