The Curious Incident Of The Artist In His Spare Time

Celebrated for his award-winning novels and illustrations, MARK HADDON has always painted for pleasure. Now a new series of abstract paintings heralds his emergence as a gallery artist as SALLY HALES discovers

Mark Haddon thinks in pictures. “I always have done,” says the author of the bestselling novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. “I can’t write a scene in a novel or a short story, for example, without a very clear picture of the room, the house, the building or the landscape where it’s taking place.”

Written from the point of view of a young boy with low-level Asperger syndrome, the book beautifully and empathically paints a picture of how the world looks and feels from the protagonist’s point of view.

A Curious Incident’s astonishing world building is the key to its success: it’s sold more than two million copies, won a clutch of awards, and spawned a theatre adaptation that’s still going strong in London’s West End. It launched its author to literary stardom overnight. Yet, by the time it was published in 2003, Haddon had already spent 20 years professionally crafting word and images together.

Born in Northamptonshire in 1962, Haddon had a childhood passion for maths, but he went on to study English at the University of Oxford, before writing children’s books and working – entirely untrained – as an illustrator. His illustrations were produced both for his own writings and also commissions for publications including the New Statesman, Private Eye and The Guardian. But painting was always there, alongside illustration and writing, as part of his creative process.