Graham Johnstone

Graham Johnstone lives and works in Scotland, between city and coast, and describes himself as a fine artist turned bureaucracy-survivor, now concentrating on graphic novels to create biographical fiction about well-known artists.

He attended Glasgow School of Art, making lithographs and etchings that used formal elements of comics: sequential imagery and integrated text. Graduating after The New Glasgow Boys, who revived figurative art in the 1980s, but before the new wave of conceptual multi-media artists, his work combines elements of both.

In the 1990s, he founded and contributed to art comics anthology Dead Trees, and created the pioneering interactive comic Tangled Tales.

Juggling creative work alongside a career of community arts, gallery education, and community learning and development – latterly as a middle-manager and strategist – has developed his grasp of human behaviour, as well as his ability to make complex ideas accessible and to realise long-term projects.

In recent years he has gained a Master of Design in Graphic Novels (University of Dundee), and Certificate in Fiction Writing (University of Glasgow), both with Distinction.

He has created short comics on Picasso, Vermeer and Ucello, and is now working on the graphic novel Francis Bacon: The Black Triptych, of which an excerpt was recently longlisted for the 2023 First Graphic Novel Award. Novelist Max Porter has described Johnstone’s work as ‘an extraordinary graphic deep dive into Bacon… I love the overlap between life and art and the invasion of his painted elements into the graphic novel world’.

Originally written as a prose novella, Francis Bacon: The Black Triptych is focused on the coincidence of Bacon’s 1971 Paris retrospective with the death of his muse George Dyer. An excerpt appeared in the anthology Alternating Current, from thi wurd, a Glasgow-based literary publisher.

Johnstone is also a prolific reviewer. His nearly 300 reviews for The Slings & Arrows Graphic Novel Guide span graphic biographies, art comics, underground comix, pop culture classics, and more.

Please visit Graham Johnstone’s website for more information about his work. Please get in touch with us to discuss publishing rights.

Photo of Graham Johnstone © Judith Hodson