First in our Illustrators’ Top Five is awesome North Western Irish drawerer and Sweet and Sound favourite Rob Whoriskey. Rob takes his sometimes meaning-filled, sometimes abstract observations and deftly transforms them into bold and playful line driven illustrations, mostly in monochrome and incorporating text. Drawing on the work of Keith Haring and the Viennese Succession, Rob finds inspiration in international and local culture from the past to the current. He employs a striking, optimistic aesthetic that is accessible to viewers of Dispatches and Rastamouse and most people in between.
Not only is Rob great with a pen (he done the Illustrators’ Top Five logo), and a nice man with a fit girlfriend, he’s also a relentless hard worker. His work is consistently of the highest calibre and with real quintessence and integrity. He’s ventured into fashion of late, contributing to loads of tee designs and creating prints for menswear designer Christopher Shannon for A/W 11 that snaked through the entire collection like a Whoriskey virus. Boy Donegal good.
Rob’s top five best things are a selection of kidult stimuli found in the library that helped shape his scribbly future.
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1. The Germs Ripper
This was in a book about American punk and hardcore someone in my town had the foresight to order for me. The image of a skeleton ripping through was enough to cement The Germs as my first favourite (proper) punk band after seeing that and hearing Forming. I loved it so much that I screen-printed a stencil of it onto a t-shirt in art class. My Mum washed it and it turned to smudge ‘cos I forgot to Iron it first. Here’s a thing about the guy who drew it…
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2. L7 Everglade
Again, fortunately, L7 had a killer combination of a bad ass Logo and songs that were just as great. I still listen to this album, and one of the few inanimate objects I vaguely care about is this 12″ single of Everglade I bought with pocket money with a cover drawing of a neanderthal in a mosh pit with a riot grrrl drawn by the great Coop. All because of a battered cd in my library.
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3. Bauhaus
The Bauhaus was the first art movement that I caught onto as a wee boy. It was probably not the first (as you can see aesthetics was my first point of contact for most of my music tastes) but it was the first where I was interested in the thinking behind the drawings. Soon after I bought The Bauhaus (band) record The Sky’s Gone Out with a photocopied sleeve of the awesome cover. It was alright, not as good as The Bauhaus sounded in my head, and like GBH it sounded better slowed down on the wrong speed.
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4. Pixies Rock Music
I listened to steady punk rock, hardcore, Crass anarco-punk, Oi! and every other strata of punk up until about sixteen. Then I reluctantly gave other music a whirl, Rock Music was the second song on Bossanova and was and still is (its the only Pixies song I really play these days) pretty much what a modern guitar song could wish to be.
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5. My Bloody Valentine
Loveless was probably one of the first two albums I got out of the library, but I was too young to get past the first and last songs, I was too young to understand them. My interest in punk waxed and wained and I got it out once more. This is one of two albums I’ve listened to since I was young consistently right up till this morning. I love it more today that I did when I first (well second time, really) found it and back then I was BIG into it. It can stand beside any progressive non guitar record that comes out today easy. Just And on a side note, Rock Music by The Pixies and the Loveless album are very similar, if you listen…
