Borin Van Loon
From Key Arts
Borin Van Loon has been a freelance illustrator since 1976. He is an author, collagist and surrealist painter and has worked for a wide variety of clients in editorial, publishing and promotion. A selection of work is included on his website encompassing books, comics, model-making and non-commercial/self-promotional paintings and collage. He has created an eclectic collage/cartoon mural on the subject of DNA and genetics for the Health Matters Gallery in London's Science Museum. His main aim in life is to pose questions which disturb and amuse in equal measure.
Borin is a member of the KeyArts group and contributed several works to the inaugural Box Room exhibition at St Mary Quay for Ip-art 2006.
His comic creation Bart Dickon, The Ideologically-Sound Secret Agent, has reached the culmination of his adventures in 'The Chap' magazine and Borin has published The Bart Dickon Omnibus of the great man's derring-doo. The central graphic novella A Severed Head comprises a surrealist collage comic-strip where our hero falls for a succubus and literally loses his head; can sidekick Snowy keep ahead (ahem!) of their pursuer, piece Bart back together again and save the day? You can purchase the book via Borin's website; there is supporting material and a Bart Mart for Bart Dickon gifts, too! He now has a presence on myspace.com and has a regular blog of his adventures for fans to read - as well as an entry on Wikipedia (until someone boots it off...). Borin did a signing of the book outside Kulture Shock in Norwich on a chilly but sunny Sunday, 2 December 2006. 'The Omnibus', in its first year has garnered some impressive reviews and a number of shops now stock the title; it is also available from Amazon.co.uk and on AbeBooks.com.
/blankpage was a collaborative project with sixteen other artists belonging to Freelance (which Borin chairs) created for Ip-art 2004. It consisted of a book as an art object with pages in widely varying media, all put together by a bookbinder. This now has a permanent home in the Suffolk Record Office, Ipswich.
Borin's 1983 book DNA for Beginners is soon to be revised and republished by Columbia Univerity Press. Borin's many Introducing series of books in documentary comic-book format are also currently available from Icon Books: Darwin, Genetics, Buddha, Eastern Philosophy, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Mathematics, Media Studies, Critical Theory, Science, Psychotherapy, Hinduism and soon to come: Postcolonialism.
Meet the ancestors (detail), 2008
Foodprints in the snow, 2008
Musclebike (line & wash)
