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Artist Info

Pre-Raphaelite design
on a wooden chest
painted in 1982

Courtney began to draw in his spare time, producing mainly figurative images, but adding borders inspired by Celtic designs. To bring in a bit of extra income, he began to paint old furniture with designs inspired by Art Nouveau and the Pre-Raphaelites for sale at craft fairs and a gallery in the Kings road, Chelsea in London. He soon found that people were prepared to pay money for his paintings and created a range of cards and prints.

Chest painted in 1982

Instead of sitting at the stall doing nothing, he would often set up his easel and start painting. Courtney told me "One of the first shows I did was at Lambeth. I'd had some black and white prints made and I was sitting there painting in the colored details by hand. People kept asking if they could buy the black and white images to paint themselves, but I had to say 'no' as I didn't have enough printed up to sell.

Arthur Rex - one of a series of illustrations produced for a coloring book, 1982

The next day I rushed out and had a load more printed - people were virtually fighting each other in the aisles to buy them - I couldn't believe it!" Courtney continued selling his work at craft fairs for six or seven years. Although his craft fair experiences were seasoned with the usual peppering of rained out days and low sales, he attended several shows where his work sold very well. "The best fair I ever did was Art in Action. The standard of work was very high and the visitors came with money, and were prepared to buy. I was camping there for the weekend and I still have this picture of me covered with five and ten pound notes after the show!"

The cover of Merlin the Immortal produced in 1984

In 1984 Courtney was working as a screen printer and sign writer during the week in Reading, Berkshire. He began to create a series of black and white pictures that would become his first book Merlin the Immortal and published the book himself, one page at a time. "Once a week, when I got my wages, I would go down to the local printer and have a hundred copies of one page printed, then the next week I would go in and get the next one printed until I had the whole book!" He compiled the pages himself and took them to be hard- bound, then took on the challenge of marketing and distributing the book.. Every day for weeks on end he filled a rucksack with copies of 'Merlin' and took a bus into London from Reading to show the book to booksellers around the capital. Within a few months a paperback version was produced from the success of the original.

Cover designs for
New World Cassettes, 1985

Another successful avenue of work came about through meeting Colin Wilcox, the owner of music business, New World Cassettes. Colin came to visit Courtney and bought five pictures 'straight off the wall' to be published as cassette covers and commissioned him to produce more.

With one book published by himself, Courtney approached the book publishers Cassell who accepted his proposal for what became The Celtic Art Source Book. Since then Courtney has produced at least one book every year. These have ranged from inspirational books like his 1997 release Celtic Pilgrimages to books such as Celtic Iron-On transfer Patterns aimed at craftspeople and artists. Courtney has spent a lot of time researching Celtic designs, and some of his work has involved recreating 'lost' images from early Christian manuscripts. Many of the early books were stolen from the monasteries by the Vikings who stripped the covers of their gold and jewels and threw the pages away, some were found by local farmers who would sometimes dip these holy books in water as a way of blessing the water, but of course this would dissolve the ink and cause the vellum pages to stretch and distort.

Jesus,
acrylics on mahogany, 1985

Recreating work like this involves detective work and intuition in equal measures. Sometimes only dots will remain giving a clue to outlines and figures not seen for hundreds of years. Celtic Illumination, published in 1998 featured many such images drawn from nearly thirty manuscripts spanning five centuries of religious iconography. His latest books include the Celtic Art Workbook series, 'Celtic Beasts', and the visually stunning St.Patrick - A Visual Celebration. He is currently working on A Treasury of Viking Designs due for release later this year.

Icon of St.John, 1985

Some of Courtney's larger books involve a huge feat of organization. "I tend to work forwards from the beginning and back from the end and work towards the middle!", he tells me, and somehow 'working towards the middle' seems to apply to many aspects of Courtney's life - working towards the middle ground between ancient traditions and modern techniques; between life with his family in rural Dorset and his life as an artist with exhibitions around the world; and between earning a living and following his heart.

Originally published in Craftsman Magazine, March 2000