Professor of Illustration; Course Leader, MA Children's Book Illustration
Director of The Centre for Children's Book Studies


Room: Rus 208

Email: martin.salisbury@anglia.ac.uk

Telephone: 0845 196 2351
International: +44 1223 363271 ext 2351


Martin Salisbury's research activity pages

Martin studied illustration at Maidstone College of Art (now part of the University of the Creative Arts) in the 1970s. He has worked as an illustrator and painter ever since, contributing illustrations to books published by most of the major UK publishers as well as designs for advertising, television and magazines. In recent years his work has focused mainly on the area of children's book illustration, painting for exhibition and writing on the subject of drawing and illustration.

Recent clients as an illustrator have included Faber & Faber, Quarto Publishing, Hodder & Stoughton, MacMillan and Oxford University Press. Martin has exhibited paintings in the UK and in Portugal and Croatia, often in joint exhibitions with Leo Duff (Principal Researcher in Drawing at Kingston University).

As a writer, Martin has contributed articles regularly to Artists & Illustrators magazine, Books for Keeps and the Journal of the Association of Illustrators, for which he has also acted as guest editor. Along with colleague Wendy Coates-Smith he founded the graphic arts journal, Line which has been internationally acclaimed as an important contribution to research into illustration and drawing. In 2003 a joint project with the North West Essex Collection at the nearby Fry Gallery led to the publication of Artists at the Fry, edited by Martin Salisbury. This is a full colour publication devoted to the work of the artists whose work is kept in this important collection, including Cambridge School of Art alumni such as Edward Bawden, Chloë Cheese and Walter Hoyle.

In 2004, Martin wrote Illustrating Children's Books, a major guide to the practice and theory of the art form published by A&C Black in the UK and now also published in the USA, China, Korea, France, Spain and Holland. He has visited Venezuela and Jamaica as a guest of the British Council to give workshops and lectures to accompany the popular travelling exhibition of British children's book illustration, Magic Pencil, curated by Quentin Blake.

Play Pen: New Children's Book Illustration was published in 2007 by Laurence King Publishing. The book is a selective survey of new trends internationally in children's book illustration. The book is already translated into a number of languages. Also in 2007, Martin Salisbury was a member of the judging panel for the prestigious Bologna Ragazzi Award in Italy. The following year he joined the international jury for the CJ Picture Book Awards in Seoul. He also helped to research and appeared throughout the BBC Television series Picture Book during that year. In 2010 he was guest presenter of the international picturebook workshop at the Itabashi Art Museum in Tokyo.

Children's Picturebooks: The Art of Visual Storytelling, written in collaboration with Professor Morag Styles (Professor of Children's Poetry at the University of Cambridge) is published in 2012 by Laurence King Publishing.

Martin currently acts as External Examiner (BA Hons Illustration) at the University of Westminster and Southampton Solent University.

Go back to the index page