Rumour has it that San Francisco based Philip Kaufman will be directing an HBO film about Ernest Hemingway and his relationship with Martha Gellhorn entitled Hemingway and Gellhorn, starring Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman. Reportedly shooting begins this year using SF locations such as Pier 80, which is surprising because no one knows of Hemingway spending any time there. Key West, Cuba, Paris, and the Northwest yes, SF not so much. San Francisco magazine commissioned this illustration of Kaufmann directing a scene at an SF street café for the cover of January’s issue.

Art direction by Ellen Zaslow.

The historic district of Dogpatch lies on the eastern side of San Francisco with some of the oldest houses in the city, dating from the 1840s. In the last twenty years Dogpatch has attracted a growing community of artists and designers, becoming the latest SF neighbourhood to be colonised by loft studios and chic boutiques.

San Francisco magazine commissioned this portrait of siblings Chris and Ben Ospital, owners of Modern Appealing Clothing, who are converting a stable house on 22nd Street into a new store. MAC started as a Hayes Valley store / gallery and became a popular gathering place for those who combine fashionable tastes with progressive leanings. Ben and Chris Ospital and their mother, Jeri, are on the cutting edge of San Francisco’s Slow Clothing movement, which combines new ideas about beauty with old-fashioned concepts of utility.

Art direction by Ellen Zaslow.

This is an image I drew whilst queuing up for ‘I Redo’, one of the three steel towers Louise Bourgeois created for Tate Modern’s opening exhibition in 2000. A spiral staircase coiled around a central column, leading to a platform surrounded by circular mirrors. The towers were both intimate and spectacular, exploring themes of childhood and family then opening out into multiple views of the newly refurbished turbine hall.

I’ve always admired Louise Bourgeois for the way she followed her own path, working in an unusually wide range of materials - wood and stone to latex and rubber - pursuing personal ideas, often inspired by her childhood. The continuity of her work over such a long stretch reminds me that the detail of a messy, vulnerable, domestic life is what endures after the ‘big’ ideas have played themselves out.

Prospect magazine commissioned this illustration for a thought-provoking story by Kate Clanchy about parental love and sacrifice in a hospital ward. The Not-Dead and The Saved has been awarded this year’s V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize and the BBC National Short Story Award.

Clanchy’s poignant writing has been praised for its “rich lyricism” and “deeply affecting style … an account of a deeply painful experience” that becomes “richer on every re-reading.” Critics were impressed by its “acute control of emotional tone … vividness and generosity.” Kate Clanchy was born in Glasgow in 1965 and educated in Edinburgh and Oxford. She currently lives in Oxford where she now works as a teacher, journalist and freelance writer.

Art direction by David Killen.