Reggie Pedro, English Illustrator, Born 1972

Pedro’s work depicts the interplay between the representation of characters and his unique painting technique. Although inevitably influenced by his London upbringing, the main subject of Pedro’s work is human emotion, civil unrest, love, boredom, isolation, exuberance and spirituality.

Pedro is best known for his record cover artwork for Mercury award-winning band Gomez between 1998 and 1999, for which he won an award for best illustrator within the music industry in 2000.
He was then commissioned to produce another four record covers for the band, resulting in his work appearing in music stores world-wide and being seen by the mainstream. It is this work that he is most recognisable for today.

Awards include Best Illustrator within the Music Industry for work done in 1999 (2000); winner of the Parallel Media Prize, where he was awarded £4,000 for Best Illustrator at the Royal College of Art ; and winner of the Painters-Stainers Award of Excellence at the Royal College of Art.Reggie Okerheire Pedro's approach to his work would appear, at least in a non-literal sense, to be a reflection on his perceptions and experiences, growing up in London.

I really appriciate Pedro's work in many ways. For example in how his characters are portrayed within the bold use of colour, outlines, flat planes and surfaces, occasional handwritten text sometimes giving a hint, or emphasising a theme or subject-matter within multi-layered images that trigger the viewer's imagination through their glimpses of possible narratives.

This is exactly what I want to achieve in my current sequence illustration and at the moment I am strongly influenced by the work of Pedro. It is when dealing with these aspects of the work, ignoring the urban settings, the fact that Reggie attempts to give life to his paintings is a clear display. Also, the way that Reggie uses the visual medium of paint to articulate his ideas shouldn't be seen as a technique which has been given little thought or as 'an outdated medium in today's computer generated image world.' But on the contrary, paint which is essentially pigment like any other use of colour can be used, and has been used in a variety of ways depending on whose hands are using it and how they view the world around them in relation to how they treat the medium. His paintings are the site of tension between representation and creative intervention, between seriousness and upliftment or humour.

'There is a lot of struggle that takes place in the creation of his work, struggles within figuration, semi-abstraction, and abstraction. His will is to render our existences as sincerely as possible without losing sight of his creative artistic endeavours.'