Reinventing the Role of Artist Reporter: George Butler in conversation with Nicolette Jones

Autumn Term, sees the return of the Royal Drawing School's Creative Conversations; dialogues between artists, curators and writers. Lectures are held on Wednesday evenings at the School or online.

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“In Ukraine I learnt that the stories of those I was trying to draw, were in fact, far more significant than my attempts at figurative likeness on the page. The drawings became an introduction to something and someone more meaningful that we would have otherwise never known”.
George Butler

'Bucha Mass Grave', George Butler © George Butler / courtesy of the artist

George Butler is an award-winning illustrator who has reinvented the role of the Artist Reporter, drawing conflict zones, climate issues, humanitarian crisis, and social issues for the news.  His drawings are done in situ - in pen, ink, and watercolour. 

In this in-conversation, George talks to Nicolette Jones about his latest work Ukraine: Remember Also Me - a collection of vivid and powerful testimonies from the conflict in Ukraine. While reporting on the war, George created striking and intimate illustrations to introduce the people behind the headlines. His drawings, made in a variety of places - from people and animals in underground shelters in the Kharkiv metro, to hospitals and bombed out streets and homes - vividly capture stories of family, tragedy, and perseverance. 

George Butler has been commissioned to offer a deliberately slow alternative to the headlines over the last 15 years.  He attaches his drawings to the personal testimonies of those that he meets and records their resolve and resilience alongside the vulnerability of their situations. This has included in a Leprosy Clinic in Nepal, a militia in Yemen, the Mass Graves in Bucha, a caesarean-section in Afghanistan, the artisanal oil fields of Myanmar and most recently for the Guardian documenting the aftermath of the Earthquake in Turkey and Syria. 

Nicolette Jones is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and the long-standing children’s books reviewer of The Sunday Times. She has been a trustee, patron and committee chair of library and literary charities, and judged prizes from the Women’s Prize to the British Book Awards. She is a professional chair of literary events, has taught writing in universities and schools as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. She was elected Honorary Fellow  of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022. Her book The Plimsoll Sensation: The Great Campaign to Save Lives at Sea (Little, Brown/Abacus), was a Radio 4 Book of the Week and won two maritime literature prizes. The American Art Tapes: Voices of Twentieth Century Art by John Jones and Nicolette Jones (Tate Publishing, 2021) is her tribute to a year in the 1960s in which her father interviewed more than 100 US artists, and it includes 20 edited interviews with artists from Marcel Duchamp to Yoko Ono. Nicolette has been focusing on book illustration on X which you can follow by searching: #NewIllustrationoftheDay 

Cover image: 'Bucha Mass Grave', George Butler, (1839), © George Butler / courtesy of the artist

Please note our Autumn Term lectures will take place in-person at the School. Places are limited and prior booking is required, entry will be denied to anyone without a ticket.