“It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.” Oscar Wilde.

James Austin Sillavan (JAS) has been cartooning since he first sat in Latin class, though he never realised a living could be made from it until much, much later.
He studied Advertising at Manchester Art School. Disillusioned during the course he launched a Manchester listings magazine, TimeTable, with two friends. After the publication folded there followed an eventful year travelling and working in Central and South America.

Returning to London from Colombia he eventually found work as a layout artist on adult magazines Knave & Fiesta, later moving to IPC and Titbits before becoming art editor of teenage magazine Pink.

In 1980 he was headhunted for the art desk of the Daily Express, then in Fleet Street, where he worked for seven years. Of the many tasks on the art desk, correcting small errors with Giles cartoons fell to Sillavan.
To counteract the unsociable working hours at The Express, Sillavan founded The Pier Breakfast Club in 1984. There he met Peter Lydon who was en route to becoming a successful TV and film director. Together they created Trousers for the then listings magazine City Limits.
This led to other commissions: DD.Corps in Blueprint magazine; Jerry on Line 1 which ran for 9 years in Sight & Sound. His personal favourite, Saul Stories, ran very briefly in The Guardian, and the film based Extras strip, was published by Esquire Magazine. In 1991 Sillavan was offered the post of diary cartoonist on The Times, and from then on drawing

became his primary occupation. At The Times his role expanded under the art direction of David Driver and over the next 3 years the paper published more than 1,000 of his drawings.

In 1994 he moved to Paris and somewhat burned out, experimented with photography. No market existed for his fine art images, but a nomination for the Deutch Bank Photography Prize came in 1997, followed by a group show at The Photographer’s Gallery in London a year later.
The following year Sillavan won a competition in Time Out and contributed one of nine stories to the first Sky Movie project called Tube Tales. His tale, ‘Bird in the Hand’, was Jude Law’s directorial debut. Tube Tales opened at the 1999 London Film Festival.

In 1999 Simon Esterson first commissioned regular contributions from Sillavan for The Guardian. Given this chance for reinvention his signature morphed to JAS. For five years, from 2003, JAS was no. 2 political cartoonist for the Daily Telegraph. In early 2009 he provided drawings for animation used in the National Theatre’s production of English People Very Nice, directed by Nicholas Hytner.

JAS cartoons regularly for The Guardian, The Tablet, and the Economist’s ‘World In’. At the start of 2009 he joined the Economist magazine drawing topical political and economic cartoons for the home page Economist.com. In addition his work has appeared in The Observer, Financial Times, Punch, TLS, and a number of other publications.

JAS lives, works and studies in London. Amongst his many interests is an enthusiasm for cinema, non-fiction and astronomy.