Feature: Art - Clare Allen’s illustrations at Burgh House until January 30th

Published: 27 January, 2011

ILLUSTRATING someone else’s words with allegorical pictures was the challenge facing artist Clare Allen when she was asked to create illustrations for a book called The Death of Al Mustafa (Quartet Books £13).

It is a sequel to The Prophet, written in the 1920s by the poet Khalil Gibran – and the artist drew on images of Lebanon to create landscapes for her dreamy, imaginative pencil drawings. The Prophet, a series of essays in prose, became popular with literary hippies in the 1960s and Gibran drew illustrations to accompnay his work. 

Clare, who lives in West Hampstead, has a 10-piece show on at Burgh House in Hampstead this week, with pictures taken from a sequel to Gibran’s poetry by academic Riad Nourallah. The story traces the final days of a prophet considering his mortality and questions surrounding life and death. 

When she was first handed the commission, Clare spent an afternoon sketching out ideas at the Royal Academy – and soon found her eye. “I wanted to do it in a similar style to images in the original book,” she says, “and so I chose that as a start and let my imagination do the work.” DC

• Drawn from Inspiration, Clare Allen’s illustrations and cover painting for The Death of Almustafa by Riad Nourallah, is at Burgh House, New End Square, Hampstead, until January 30, 020 7431 0144, www.burghhouse.org.uk