Michael Whelan (born June 29, 1950) is a multiple award winning American artist specializing in science fiction and fantasy illustration. His art has appeared on over 350 book and magazine covers, including most of the Del Rey editions of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom (John Carter of Mars) series, the DAW editions of Michael Moorcock's Elric books, the Ace editions of H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy novels, and Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Otherland, and Shadowmarch series. Whelan provided covers and interior illustrations for Stephen King's The Gunslinger and The Dark Tower, the first and last of his Dark Tower books. He describes his art style as "imaginative realism."
Biography
Michael Whelan was born in Culver City, California, the son of William and Nancy Whelan. As a child, he had a nomadic existence, moving nearly every other year due to the demands of his father's aerospace industry career. He grew up in Colorado, several cities along the California coast, and in New Mexico (near the White Sands Proving Ground). Whelan's time near White Sands proved a lasting influence; in a 2000 interview, he noted that he couldn't "deny that living near to missile launching sites and Air Force bases had an impact. It was always thrilling to watch them go up...and sometimes blow up" (AudioBookCafe.com).
By the time Whelan was in high school, his family had moved to Denver. It was there that he began his formal training in art, taking summer classes at Denver's Rocky Mountain School of Art. By his final year of high school, his family had moved again; this time to San Jose, CA.
He attended college at San Jose State University. While at SJSU, he worked in the Anatomy and Physiology Department, gaining a first-hand knowledge of human anatomy. According to Whelan, his job "involved all sorts of tasks related to the anatomy department, such as preparing cadavers for the classes, stringing bones together to make complete skeletons, making models of body parts, some medical illustration, etc." (Delos). Some of Whelan's college medical drawings appeared in The Journal Of Bone And Joint Surgery.
After graduating from SJSU in 1973 with a BA in Painting (as a "President's Scholar"), Whelan studied at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles from 1973-1974. In 1974 Donald A. Wollheim of DAW Books gave Whelan his first professional assignment—the cover to Lin Carter's fantasy novel, The Enchantress of World's End, after seeing Whelan's artwork at a science fiction convention.
Whelan left the Art Center College of Design to pursue illustration full-time. In 1975, he moved to Connecticut so as to be near the New York City hub of the publishing industry. There he met Audrey Price—originally his landlady—who was eventually to marry.
Whelan quickly gained a reputation as a talented, imaginative, and dependable cover artist, working for science fiction and fantasy publishers such as DAW Books, Del Rey, and Ace. Whelan credits the 1979 publication of Anne McCaffrey's best-selling The White Dragon featuring his cover art as a turning point in his career. He won his first Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist in 1980 at the Noreascon II Worldcon in Boston. In his career to date, Whelan has won fifteen Hugos—more than any other single person.
Whelan makes a practice of reading the entire book that he was to illustrate, usually twice. "I try to let the book I'm illustrating determine the approach and subject matter," he stated (Delos). Not suprisingly, Whelan's close attention to the work he illustrates has made him popular with writers. Fantasist Michael Moorcock wrote of Whelan, "I am more than usually grateful for an artist who not only depicts him [Elric] as I imagine (and describe him) but who also manages to capture some of the appropriate atmosphere" (Wonderworks, p. 36). Science fiction writer Anne McCaffrey praised him, declaring, "Fortunate indeed is the author who has Michael Whelan for an illustrator" (Wonderworks, p. 55).
Whelan currently lives in Danbury, Connecticut, where his wife Audrey Price oversees their Glass Onion Graphics gallery. In recent years, he has begun to move away from commissioned illustration work, preferring to concentrate on gallery pieces and "self-commissioned" works.
He and Audrey Price have two children, Alexa and Adrian. Whelan was successfully treated for prostate cancer in 2000.
Honors
Whelan's work has been widely honored both inside the science fiction and fantasy field and beyond. His honors and awards include:
- Fifteen Hugo Awards, including:
- Twelve for Best Professional Artist
- One for Best Original Artwork
- Three for Best Nonfiction Book (Wonderworks, Michael Whelan's Works of Wonder and The Art of Michael Whelan: Scenes / Visions)
- "SuperHugo" presented at the 50th Worldcon (1992) for Best Artist of the Last 50 Years (not considered an official Hugo award)
- Three World Fantasy Awards for Best Artist (1981, 1982, & 1983), the maximum number allowed under that award's rules
- Eleven Chesley Awards from the Association of Science Fiction & Fantasy Artists (ASFA)
- Allied Artists of America's Grumbacher Gold Medal (1994) for his painting, Climber
- Society of Illustrators' Gold Medal (1997) for his digital painting, Crux Humanis
Art collections
Something in My Eye, (1997) (poster book) ISBN 0929480821
The Art of Michael Whelan: Scenes/Visions, (1993) ISBN 0553074474
Michael Whelan's Works of Wonder, (1988) ISBN 0345326792
Wonderworks: Science Fiction and Fantasy Art, (1979) ISBN 0915442744
External links
Michael Whelan Official Site
Michael Whelan Bibliography at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Delos "An Interview With Michael Whelan"
Artist Interviews "Michael Whelan"
AudioBookCafe.com "Interview with Michael Whelan"
Lilja's Library "Interview with Michael Whelan; June 23, 2004"
Other references
Locus "Michael Whelan: Breathing Space" January 1993
