Ken Sprague -- People's Artist
John Green
This lively portrait shows how everyone can be a special kind of artist - how art can transform lives, deepen social engagement and build bridges. Ken Sprague's goal as a people's artist is, 'to build a pathway to the Golden City, and to help people dream again.' Here, for the first time is a selection of Ken's pictures, including his Guernica cartoon as a boy, poster for Martin Luther King, the labour movement, the Anti Apartheid Campaign and war pictures from Iraq and Kosovo.

Ken Sprague is a print-maker, posterman, painter, cartoonist, muralist, banner maker, psychodrama tutor and art teacher. He is a legendary storyteller, with moving and amusing stories to enliven his pictures.

Twice winner of the National Council for Industrial Design's poster of the year award, he has frequently exhibited. Uniquely, he is probably the only British artist with a life long connection with the trade union movement. His BBC Omnibus film, The Posterman, was very popular.

Full of good stories, this biography offers fascinating insights into the crisis of art. It asks how art can be reclaimed for ordinary people and communities. Ken Sprague is an artist who, as a radical freethinker, does not fit easily into any category. He invites us to take creative action for a better, more beautiful world.

Visit Ken Sprague's website.

John Green is a journalist, film maker, artist and trade union official, with a life-long interest in art.

192pp; 297 x 210mm;
1 903458 34X; paperback;
£25.00

'This celebration of Ken Sprague's life is to be welcomed, he, as much as anyone, deserves it.'
Tony Benn

'This book reflects the varied life and interests of a splendid character, racy, determined, invariably smiling with people and at life.'
Jack Jones, former General Secretary, TGWU

'Ken Sprague, the most practised and efficient image maker of them all, shows a school of fish organising themselves to devour a big predator and, in a couple of watercolours, reveals himself to be something of a humane Burra.'
William Feaver, Sunday Times art critic, reviewing the Art for Society exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery

'Ken's art has the power and strength to inspire. He is the true heir, as a socialist artist, of William Morris, and achieved what William Morris could only dream of.'
Martin Rowson, cartoonist.