About Michael McGuinness
Born and educated in Essex, Michael McGuinness studied illustration at the S.E. Essex School of Art, then painting at the Royal Academy Schools and at Walthamstow with Stuart Ray and John Titchell. In the early sixties he joined The Observer Newspaper and Magazine as Artist/Designer and then went on to Readers Digest as Art Editor for Special Projects.
Freelancing during the seventies as Illustrator/Designer, he had a solo show of paintings and drawings in London, was elected to The New English Art Club and showed oils and watercolours at the Royal Academy Summer Shows.
Senior Design Editing at Mitchell Beazley Publishers followed and a period on the Sunday Times at Wapping. In 1986 he joined The Independent before launch, first as Deputy Art Editor and then as Art Editor, seeing the paper through every stage of the award-winning process of the first newspaper to be conceived and born in the new technology. He later became the first Art Editor of The Independent on Sunday.
In 1989 he was elected as a member of the Royal Watercolour Society and has shown regularly at the Bankside Gallery since then. He has also shown at Christie’s and in the touring show in Spain.
In 1990, McGuinness was selected by Bernard Dunstan for the Directors’ Choice exhibition at the New Academy in London, and two books were published to which he contributed. The Encyclopedia of Watercolour techniques, and The New Guide to Illustration, for which he wrote a chapter on the use of illustration of newspapers.
In 1991 he left The Independent on Sunday, continuing to show with the Royal watercolour Society, and in 1993 was an award winner in the Sixth Singer Friedlander/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition.
In 1993 he was invited to design the Colour Magazine for the relaunch of The Observer, and was with them until the late spring of 1994. In the Autumn of 1994, he joined The Independent and Independent on Sunday as Head of Design and Graphics.
Michael was also the illustrator for a number of books, including Introducing Jung: A Graphic Guide, Einstein for Beginners and Monsters.
