Richey Beckett is a pen-and-ink illustrator based in rural Wales, known for his intricately detailed linework and richly atmospheric style. Drawing on influences such as Doré, Dürer, Virgil Finlay, Art Nouveau, psychedelia, and the natural world, he has developed a distinctive and evocative visual language. His work includes album art for Metallica, The Grateful Dead, Nine Inch Nails, and Robert Plant, as well as official posters and artwork for Jim Henson's 'Labyrinth,' HBO's 'Game Of Thrones', Sam Raimi's 'Army Of Darkness,' John Boorman's 'Zardoz,' AMC's 'The Walking Dead,' Robin Hardy's 'The Wicker Man,' and David Robert Mitchell's 'It Follows.'

EARTH European Tour poster by Richey Beckett

Hi Richey, thanks for chatting with us today. We're really looking forward to learning more about your work, creative process, and inspirations.

1. Your artwork feels very harmonious, as if you've built your own world; one with a clear and unmistakable visual identity. How did you find your voice as an artist, and what helped shape it along the way?

That’s a really beautiful reflection, thank you! I’ve always leaned towards creating imagery that feels fantastical rather than realistic and I think that world is shaped by building a collection of motifs and stylistic flourishes as well of a set of rules as to how they’re used. So, for example, there’s rarely any perspective in my work - it usually operates on one plane. There are rules in how the linework interacts, or use of colour, and I like there to be a lot of movement so that each image feels like a snapshot of a greater story. In terms of what shaped that, it’s really just personal discovery along the way, seeing what works, what I like, and what effect it has on the viewer. Building a collection of visual tricks and moves that I can pull from and apply depending on what the piece requires. And of course you’ll take diversions along the way, try things out that maybe didn’t work - and that’s equally important as it reinforces your voice because you’ll be reminded of what feels ‘right’ to you. 

Mastodon Casino de Paris, poster by Richey Beckett

2. You live in rural Wales, and nature clearly plays a significant role in your work. How does your local environment influence your creative process?

It’s been a huge influence, and it’s not even like you have to go searching for inspiration, you’re really surrounded by it. Being out for a walk and noticing a beautiful formation in a tree branch, or a new leaf shape you’ve not seen before, or a dried up dead flower blowing in the wind… these things are everywhere and if you have the awareness to notice them, it’s almost overwhelming. The same goes for colours and colour palettes. I take a lot of reference photos that I can return to whenever needed, but in terms of how it influences the actual process, it can be so inspiring to see these forms in nature that it’ll push me towards actually picking up a pen and creating a new piece of art. To me, tuning into nature in this way isn’t so much about drawing landscapes or accurately depicting a flower, it’s more inline with the Art Nouveau approach,  to be seduced by the beauty of these forms that are all around us and the have them inform the mark making, the shapes and patterns we make. And those may be exaggerated, duplicated or transformed but ultimately worship the beauty that exists throughout nature. 

3. In an interview you mentioned being influenced by great artists like Dürer and Doré, while you were at school, and I can see echoes of their influence, for example in works like 'Worker Bees', and 'Heavy Pendulum', which almost feels like it could be a scene from Doré's Rime of the Ancient Mariner! What is it about those artists that continues to resonate with you?

I feel less directly inspired by them currently, as I’m working to use colour in a more meaningful way in my work - but there’s something about those artists that feels like my baseline when it comes to an artistic language, that their work is a foundation that feels in tune with my artistic soul. I remember in school studying mostly renaissance painting and although I appreciated it, it really didn’t resonate with me at all and didn’t inspire me to pick up a paintbrush. The same way as I’ve never felt connected to graffiti art or hyper realism. As soon as I saw Dürer I had that feeling of “that’s my shit!”, in the same way you might connect with a band hearing them for the first time. It was as much about loving a the art as it was about somehow feeling like I understood their visual language. I felt the same about traditional pen and ink methods, cross hatching and stippling, it just made sense to me. So it feels like that’s still at the core of everything I do, even when I flirt with colour or pattern, I’ll still come back to that style… sometimes even when I’m trying not to! Hah.  

Cave In - Heavy Pendulum by Richey Beckett

4. Is there a book (art-related or otherwise!) that's had a lasting impact on you or your creative process?

When I was working on the Grateful Dead poster in 2016, my dear friend Biddy Maroney, who’s an incredible artist (one half of Australian duo Sonny & Biddy) recommended a book to me called Electrical Banana. It’s a compendium of psychedelic art, focussing on six of the most notable artists in that field. It was exactly the education I needed at that moment and a concise but powerful injection of inspiration. The book profiles each artists by presenting a short interview and a collection of their work. It includes Mati Klarwein, Keiichi Taanami, Martin Sharp and most significantly for me, Tadanoori Yokoo. After this I picked up Tadanoori Yokoo’s 100 Posters collection, which I keep on hand at all times. It’s not even so much that the art style directly informs my work - but just opening up the book and pouring through it is so deeply inspiring. It’s an absolute overload of great ideas, great use of colour, powerful poster compositions. 

5. Your use of light, shadow, and composition gives your work a striking sense of movement and atmosphere; looking at your work, it's almost like you can feel the wind or the sea spray. Can you walk us through your creative process?

It’s lovely to hear this, thank you! I’ve always felt compelled to capture a sense of movement in my work, and I put it down to my love of film. To me, the two have always gone hand in hand. A lot of the art that I drew as a kid was inspired by films, and what I was trying to capture was often a moment within in a scene. So I think I’ve carried that forward, I always think of an image in motion. If a figure or subject is static, then I’ll want to apply as much movement to the background and surrounding elements as I can, whether that’s with hair and garments catching the wind, or petals rushing through. I think I’ve become addicted to that aesthetic, in a way. I like the romanticism that it adds, the fantastical nature of it, if I don’t add this kind of movement then the image can feel very stagnant to me. Unless, occasionally I’m aiming to create something that has a stillness or a boldness to it that requires a more static image. It’s also good to be selective about how to employ those tricks - there was definitely a time where I’d go overkill on movement across the whole image, but over time I’ve tried to learn how to focus energy into specific areas or guide the eye around the piece in a specific way. 

Mastodon, Cold, Dark Place poster by Richey Beckett

6. Your artwork is created using pen and ink. Is there another medium, traditional or digital, that you're interested in exploring in the future?

I’ve no real interest in exploring digital tools, but I’ve always wanted to try my hand at more painting. Over the last year I’ve dabbled in acrylic and oil, with mixed results. My interest in this really comes from wanting to create some full colour work, that can be delivered as a finished ‘original’ piece. Most of the work that I’ve made in pen and ink, ends up as a screen print and that’s the final coloured version, but it’s always several steps away from the original drawing. So it’s something that I’d love to accomplish, making a full colour piece of work, at a large scale, that satisfies all of the aspects of one of my screen printed pieces but as a one off original piece of art. 

7. You've created gig posters for some huge names; Metallica, Pixies, Nine Inch Nails, Black Sabbath and more. What's your process for approaching a project like that? Do the bands or their teams give creative direction, or is it mostly up to you? And when it comes to artists with such strong visual legacies, like the Grateful Dead, do you feel extra pressure, or do you approach every brief the same way?

This is a great question! In almost all cases with these kind of jobs, I’m very much given free rein. This is a big reason why I’ve worked in gig posters for the last few years - it doesn’t hold the same level of stakes that say an album cover would.. it’s a very transient piece of art that’s really just celebrating a moment in time, one night, so I find that the bands enjoy the chance to diversify their own aesthetic and to say to an artist ‘do your thing! Have fun with it!’. I think the poster collectors enjoy this too. However, all that said, I still will always look to the visual legacy too. I’m never out to make something that’s completely out of place - I really want my work to be in conversation with the legacy of that band. I think there has to be a strong awareness there. So then, you might approach it as saying “what does this look like through my own lens”.

So, for example, I recently worked on a new poster for Metallica, that’s going to be released later this year. I started thinking back to the aesthetic they had in the 80’s, the Pushead art and more specifically that palette. I was thinking of those cheap fly posters that you might stick on you garage wall at band practice. So I had all of this in mind, but for the illustration itself I took influence from Russian folklore illustrator Ivan Bilibin, as I thought that it fit with the lyrical ideas, and I drew the piece in dip pen and walnut ink. But the graphic layout and colour palette were informed by those old posters  - so the aim was to smash these two very diverse things together and hopefully come up with a fresh take. 

Metallica, Moth into Flame poster by Richey Beckett

8. Who are three contemporary artists whose work you're currently enjoying or finding inspiring?

Oh, so many! An artist I've been continuously inspired by since discovering her work is Lily Seika Jones. She paints woodland creatures, anthropomorphised into various situations and they're extremely adorable, but what resonates with me specifically is her observation of the natural world and the way she lovingly paints the trees, roots, cat tails and moss—you can see very clearly that she's painting from her own personal observation. The palette too is taken from the environment in which she lives. So this has reinvigorated an interest for me in paying greater attention to the details of my surroundings.

I’ve been very inspired by Swedish artist Kilian Eng for a long time - he’s a master of sci-fi art and has a very distinct aesthetic. His work has an undeniable authenticity to it. He’s created a huge amount of digital work over the years, but recently he’s been sharing paintings in gouache. It’s very recognisable as his work, but the addition of the physicality of the paint and brush strokes, the boldness and the vibrancy of the colour, has been thrilling to see. It circles back to my earlier ideas about painting.

Danny Larsen is a Norwegian artist who draws large atmospheric landscapes, but in a style that’s developed from pen and ink and stippling and scaled up, drawn onto a large canvas. I was fortunate to visit the opening of his recent gallery show in London, so I got to meet Danny and see his work up close. It was deeply inspiring, as we have a lot in common in terms of our background and stylistic approach, and to see him push it into these new realms of scale and gallery work was a real thrill.

And as an honorable mention I'd like to throw in a wild card with Robert Beatty. His weirdo throwback airbrush style surrealism is always so inspiring. I received his book ‘Floodgate Companion’ the other day and it’s another you can open on any page and find inspiration. And I’ve no idea how he makes it.  

Queens of the Stone Age, Oberhausen, Germany poster by Richey Beckett

9. You have a ticket for the Vault Editions time machine, which allows you to have a conversation with any artist in history. Who would you choose, and what would you ask them?

Damn that’s one hell of a question! Well, the first person that comes to mind is Bernie Wrightson. I actually had the chance to meet him when we appeared at a convention together in Austin TX, but somehow I was too nervous to speak with him because I only knew his Frankenstein art and wasn’t versed in Swamp Thing or his comic art as I’m just not a comic guy. So I projected the idea that if I was to speak with him he might talk about those things and it’d be a disaster. I nodded and he gave me a lovely smile and said “Hi!” but that was it. He was supposed to appear again the following year so I was determined to speak to him that time, but then he got ill and passed away shortly after. So I still have that lovely warm smile to remember him by, but I really wanted to ask him about his technique when he was drawing Frankenstein. Was it all dip pen and ink, or technical pens, and did he use any white ink as there are areas that look like he might have.

I have similar questions for Virgil Finlay. I have many books of his work but it’s reproduced in pure black and white, as it would’ve been in the pulpy sci-fi books they appeared in - but due to this it’s hard to tell what his technique really is. There are areas that appear as if he was using white ink, but I can’t be sure. The great mysteries!   

Foo Fighters, London Stadium poster by Richey Beckett

10. Finally, what's on your studio playlist at the moment?

I’ve been listening to a lot of instrumental music, specifically I’ve been creating a playlist that I call ‘Morning Drawing’, and it’s become a part of my new sketchbook ritual each morning since new year. Today I added a band called HARESS who make mostly instrumental folk infused experimental long form songs. Also SMOTE who carve a similar path, both bands are from the North of England. Then I’ve also added in some records by DOUGLAS MCCOMBS - I’d been a fan of TORTOISE for some time, and he’s the bassist in that band, but I wasn’t familiar with his solo and collab records until recently, which are beautiful instrumental soundscapes. Perfect for finding a transcendent mental state with fresh coffee and a sketchbook!  

Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today, Richey. We really appreciate it, and we are excited to share your interview with our community!

Thank you so much, it’s an absolute pleasure!