MIKE'S PHOTO ALBUM
Gallery of Friends and Family

About the Artist:

   Chris Achilleos was born in Famagusta, Cyprus in 1947, but moved to England with his family in 1960. He went to school in London, then on to Hornsey College of Art in 1965, where he studied technical and scientific drawing. Since 1969 he has become a foremost fantasy illustrator, mainly of book jackets featuring science fiction and "Sword and Sorcery" tales. He lives in London and is married with two children.

   Achilleos' fascination with popular heroic imagery dates from his childhood. He learned about Greek myth and legend from "Classic" comics while he lived in Cyprus, and moved on to the finely drawn and forceful strips in "Eagle" when he came to live in England. Frank Bellamy's outstanding "Eagle" centre spread, "Heros the Spartan", was particularly influential on his growing interest in the possibilities of comic illustration.

   While studying at Hornsey College of Art, he collected American comic imports, and absorbed the dynamism of their graphics into his own comic strip work. He mixed the technical control he gained from his main course of study with these influences to produce highly finished science fantasy designs, direct progressions from his childhood dreams and stimulae. These dreams were, and are, mainly of the heroes of the past; noble savages who fight by hand and sword against enormous odds, like Achilles, or Beowulf, or the new superhumans invented by such writers as Robert E. Howard in his "Conan" series.

   Chris Achilleos brings a meticulous technical skill to the illustration of tales of bloody heroism. In his polished artwork, cold metal gleams against and mingles with strange fetishist clothing. On his warriors and Amazons, armour merges into skin and fur; jewelled pendants drip from highly crafted gold and silver bracelets, while ornate swords are strapped and buckled onto body-moulded carapaces.

   His heroes hack victory from the hideous forms of semi-human adversaries. The worse the odds against these champions are, the more complete and gory their eventual triumph will be, echoing the presence of some dark, mysterious "rightness".

   His combatants sweep from rocky amphitheatres to the depths of ghoul-infested caves. But their battles can have only one result- the hero with a bloody sword or axe will stand triumphantly astride a heap of dead or dying victims.

   His heroine, meanwhile will merely stand or lie unmoved against this backdrop of barbaric carnage. Loaded with the trappings of eroticism, yet somehow cold, her image recurs in Achilleos' work as the symbol of an unattainable perfection. The heroine provides the reason for the hero's acts of maniac valour - her inaccessibility completes the mythic pattern of his world.

   Achilleos' style is based on fastidious application. He works exclusively to commission, painting by daylight systematically and slowly, spending from one to four weeks on each picture. He draws from photographic and other visual source material, working the pictures up from pencil roughs and developing them in inks, watercolours and fabric dyes. To obtain the finish needed on his graphic work, he uses an airbrush; but for his large heroic pictures he uses acrylics on canvas, a medium he much prefers.

   Though his commissions vary, there are three constant preoccupations in his work which he will freely admit to. His heroes are "born adventurers who live by their wits, instinctively fighting for the right without being aware of it". His beasts are usually humanoid, for "the most effective monster is something you can relate to". His women finally, are even more large than life than his other creations; "Pure fantasy, as perfect as possible"