Patrick Woodroffe

Patrick James Woodroffe (27 October 1940 – 10 May 2014) was an English artist, etcher and drawer, specialised in fantasy science-fiction artwork, with images that bordered on the surreal. His achievements include several collaborations with well-known musicians, two bronze sculptures displayed in Switzerland and numerous books.

Woodroffe was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, in 1940, the son of an electrical engineer.

In 1964 he graduated in French and German at the University of Leeds, before going on to exhibit his first showing of pen and ink drawings, Conflict, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. However he did not become a full-time artist until 1972, the year in which he gave an exhibit of his paintings, etchings and related works at the Covent Garden Gallery in London.

His career took off when he was asked to produce approximately 90 book cover paintings between 1973 and 1976 for Corgi, including Peter Valentine Timlett's The Seedbearers (1975) and Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber (1974). During this early period he was also commissioned to provide art for record album cover sleeves, including heavy metal band Judas Priest's album Sad Wings of Destiny (1976). This was followed by an exhibition of book-jacket and record-sleeve paintings in 1976, which appeared at Mel Calman's Workshop Gallery in London. That year the children's book Micky's New Home was published with illustrations by Woodroffe. In 1978 he mounted an exhibition of more than two hundred works at the historic Piece Hall in Halifax.

In 1979, Woodroffe then went on to create illustrations for The Pentateuch of the Cosmogony: The Birth and Death of a World (later shortened to 'The Pentateuch'), a joint project the symphonic rock musician Dave Greenslade. The Pentateuch purports to be the first five chapters of an alien Book of Genesis. The album consisted of two-discs by Greenslade, and a 47-page book of Woodroffe's illustrations. The record sold over 50,000 copies between 1979 and 1984. The illustrations were shown at the World Science Fiction Convention, at Brighton's Metropole Hotel in 1979. In 1976, his illustrated book The Adventures of Tinker the Hole Eating Duck was published by Dragon's World.

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