He is also one of the UK most acclaimed comic artists.

His work incorporates drawing, painting, photography, collage, found objects, digital art and sculpture.

McKean’s projects include illustrating comics by authors such as Neil Gaiman (Violent Cases, The Sandman series, The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch) and Grant Morrison (Batman – Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth).

He has directed three feature films and created innovative performances for the stage incorporating graphic art, music and spoken word, including Black Dog – The Dreams of Paul Nash, commissioned to commemorate the 100th centenary of World War One and performed on the Somme, in Kendal and at Tate Britain.

His more recent projects include the comic Raptor, published in 2021. Hamish Hamilton announced in June 2024 that it has signed up a graphic novel project bringing together best selling nature writer Robert Macfarlane actor-musician Johnny Flynn and artist Dave McKean to retell the Epic of Gilgamesh, the epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia. 

The graphic novel wil tell "both the tale, then, and the tale of the tale”, with one strand the epic itself of the god-king Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu who journey to the Sacred Cedar Wood; a second strand revolves around George Smith, the auto-didact, working-class genius who in the 1860s taught himself to read the ancient cuneiform script, and became the first modern translator of Gilgamesh.

The three-way collaboration has its roots in a story-song show, "Lost In The Cedar Wood", that Macfarlane and Flynn created in 2021. That show in turn began as an album of the same name that the pair released in 2022.

Dave McKean Online

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