Stanley Donwood

Artist

Birthday October 29, 1968

Birth Sign Scorpio

Birthplace Essex, England

Age 55 years old

Nationality United Kingdom

#64021 Most Popular

1960

The paintings, based on Islamic pirate maps and 1960s US military topographic charts, began as work for the 2022 Smile album A Light For Attracting Attention.

1965

All mechanised operations – printing, cutting and scoring – were carried out using a 1965 Heidelberg platen press.

1968

Dan Rickwood (born 29 October 1968), known professionally as Stanley Donwood, is an English artist and writer.

1994

Since 1994, he has created all the artwork for the rock band Radiohead with their singer, Thom Yorke, plus Yorke's other projects, including Atoms for Peace and the Smile.

He also creates artwork for Glastonbury Festival and has published books of writing.

Rickwood uses the pen name Stanley Donwood.

He said: "I like to separate the person I am at home — washing up, vacuuming, picking up the kids from school and so on — from whoever Stanley Donwood is."

He described record shops, with their shelves of album covers, as his introduction to art.

Donwood and the Radiohead singer, Thom Yorke, met as art students at the University of Exeter.

Donwood said his first impressions of Yorke were that he was "Mouthy. Pissed off. Someone I could work with."

Yorke wrote: "I met him first day at art college ... I figured I'd either end up really not liking this person at all, or working with him for the rest of my life."

Yorke asked Donwood to produce the cover art for Radiohead's 1994 EP My Iron Lung. Donwood was not a fan of rock music, and said he took the work because he knew Yorke.

2001

Donwood has published three collections of short stories: Slowly Downward: A Collection of Miserable Stories (2001), Household Worms (2011) and Bad Island (2020).

2002

In 2002, Donwood and Yorke won a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package for the special edition for the album Amnesiac.

Donwood contributed to Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, a 2021 interactive experience with music and artwork from Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001).

He also creates artwork for Yorke's solo records and Yorke's bands Atoms for Peace and the Smile.

2006

In 2006, Donwood's exhibition "London Views" consisted of a series of 14 lino prints of various London landmarks being destroyed by fire and flood.

The prints were exhibited at the Lazarides Gallery in London.

The prints were used as the cover and insert art for Yorke's first solo album, The Eraser (2006).

In November 2006, Donwood exhibited the original paintings and other artwork done by him and Yorke for Radiohead albums, at Iguapop Gallery in Barcelona.

In late 2006, Stanley Donwood, along with Richard Lawrence, launched an independent record company, Six Inch Records.

The label released three albums, with 333 copies of each.

The CDs were packaged by hand into sleeves that were six inches square.

In 2006, Donwood began creating and selling large screen prints.

In an interview with AllMusic, he explained it as an effort to reconnect with the process of print making and as a means to share his art in a larger format than the small, low quality prints in album cover and insert art, "It's a way of getting pictures out in the way they should be seen; not as 4-colour litho on cheap paper, but as real pieces of artwork that have a much greater visual impact."

Donwood creates artwork for Glastonbury Festival.

Donwood has created book covers for the nature writer Robert Macfarlane.

In 2021, he collaborated with Macfarlane on an edition of Thomas Hardy's poems published by the Folio Society.

Donwood provided the illustrations for the poems selected and introduced by Macfarlane.

2009

On 18 February 2009, Donwood announced that Six Inch Records had closed.

2011

He contributed stories to The Universal Sigh, a free single-issue newspaper created to promote Radiohead's 2011 album ''The King of Limbs.

2015

He said in 2015: "[Radiohead] wasn't my cup of tea at all. Now they have seen sense and are a lot more electro. I like their stuff now."

With Yorke, Donwood has since provided artwork for all of Radiohead's releases and promotional material.

Donwood works as Radiohead record, allowing the music to influence the artwork.

In May 2015, Donwood opened an exhibition of Radiohead artwork, The Panic Office, in Sydney, Australia, for which Yorke composed an original soundtrack.

In 2021, Donwood designed a Radiohead-themed Brompton bicycle to be auctioned for the charity Crew Nation.

In October 2021, Donwood and Yorke curated an exhibition of Radiohead artwork at Christie's headquarters in London.

Donwood auctioned paintings and other artwork he created for Kid A.

Yorke and Donwood exhibited a selection of artwork, The Crow Flies Part One, in September in London.

2019

In 2019, he published a memoir about his work, There Will Be No Quiet''.