James Sillavan, 1950-2013

James A Sillavan (JAS) studied advertising at Manchester School of Art in the early 1970s. Returning to the UK after a year in Colombia he went into magazine design and ended up as a layout artist on the Daily Express.

In 1991, Sillavan was offered the post of diary cartoonist on the Times. This was followed by a move to Paris in 1996 where Sillavan took up photography.

Sillavan received his first Guardian commission in 1999, changed his 'sign off' to JAS and began cartooning again, providing the Guardian with two illustrations per week. In the years that followed, Sillavan’s cartoons accompanied hundreds of articles across various sections of the paper, most commonly the Education and Comment & Debate pages.

As well as the Guardian, Sillavan’s work has appeared in numerous other papers including the Observer, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph and the Economist.

From the guide to the Illustrations by James Sillavan, 1999-2010, (Guardian News & Media Archive)