John Kindness
John Kindness is an internationally renowned painter, sculptor and multimedia artist from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who created and contributed to comic zines in the 1970s.
After graduating from Belfast College of Art in 1974, he became involved in a small community press. In 1976 he created and published a comic called The Hand: a Tale of Old Belfast, a snapshot of life in north Belfast in which a young man named Sammy hangs around with the "corner boys", causing trouble, until he is killed in a drive-by shooting. A follow-up, The Three Graces, was never completed. Around the same time he contributed to the The People's Comic, drawing Belfast hardman Jimmy Ripshite ("the man that ate the cooked ham raw"), and satirical strips about a Loyalist Navy and about how to tell the difference between Protestants and Catholics.
He has been a full-time artist since 1986, and is probably known for his public pieces like the Big Fish (1999) at Donegall Quay, Belfast, the Waterfall of Souvenirs (1991) at the Europa Bus Station, Belfast, The Museum of the Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children, and Romulus and Seamus at the Fire Station in Dublin.
