Kirk, Richard A
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Artist, Author.
(1962- ) UK-born artist, illustrator and author, in Canada from childhood, active as an illustrator from the 1990s. His curvilinear, chiaroscuro-ridden, metamorphic landscapes and portraits show the influence (which he has openly acknowledged) of predecessors from Aubrey Beardsley (1866-1896) and Mervyn Peake, on to contemporaries like Frank Frazetta and Moebius (Jean Giraud); in some of his more intricately claustrophobic presentations of figures seemingly trapped in mid-transfiguration, echoes of Richard Dadd (1817-1886) can be detected. Authors whose work he has illustrated include Christopher Golden, Caitlín R Kiernan and China Miéville.
As an author, Kirk is of sf interest for the Lumsden Moss sequence comprising The Lost Machine (2010) and Necessary Monsters (2017), set in an Equipoisally fantasticated Ruined Earth that has not properly recovered from a disastrous War between Magic and science. Fresh from Prison (see also Crime and Punishment), Moss first tracks down the killer of several children; then, in the second volume, steals a book whose previous owners, and whose contents, may help decipher the drama of the world's traumatic past. [JC]
Richard A Kirk
born Kingston Upon Hull, Yorkshire: 5 October 1962
works
series
Lumsden Moss
- The Lost Machine (London, Ontario: Radiolaria Studios, 2010) [chap: Lumsden Moss: illus/pb/Richard A Kirk]
- Necessary Monsters (no place given: Resurrection House/Arche Press, 2017) [Lumsden Moss: illus/pb/Richard A Kirk]
individual titles
- Tailor of Echoes (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2021) [hb/Richard A Kirk]
collections and stories
- Magpie's Ladder (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2019) [coll: hb/Richard A Kirk]
links
previous versions of this entry