Dylan Moran is best known as a BAFTA and Perrier Award-winning comedian, writer, and actor who co-created and starred in the cult series Black Books. But beyond the stage and screen, Moran has been drawing and painting since childhood, creating a parallel world of visual art that explores the same eccentric, observational territory as his comedy.
Based in Brighton, UK, Moran works in watercolours, ink paintings, and drawings. “I’ve been painting, drawing and writing since I was a child,” Moran explains. “My words and pictures are set in a theatrical conversation. The words might be dialogue or song, praises, curses, prayer or even a hex.” His work often blurs the line between abstraction and precision, drawing viewers into a world that feels both intimate and profound. His figurative style fuses expressive emotion with striking realism, featuring bold color contrasts and fluid visual narratives that are both compelling and thought-provoking.
His creative process is intuitive and prolific. During his 2018 Grumbling Mustard tour, he was “drawing and doing these watercolours at a rate of dozens a day” as a way to process his nerves. “I furiously displaced all my nerves into drawing and produced a lot of weird artwork that I really enjoyed doing. I only realised what an incredible index to the subconscious it is.”
For over thirty years, Moran has been filling countless sketchbooks alongside his comedy career. Among these are his tiniest sketchbooks—vintage Japanese letterpress label books, originally used for printing small commercial labels and stamps—which he transforms into portable repositories for miniature artworks. The works in LIGHTBOX26 come from this intimate practice: tiny, unique pieces drawn on Japanese letterpress label paper, each approximately 1.5 to 2 inches in size. These works are often created in pairs that exist “in dialogue with each other” or appear to be “talking,” with some perforated in the middle so they can be separated or kept as an attached duo. These pieces were part of his “Characters and Creatures” exhibition series.
These letterpress label works represent a rare glimpse into Moran’s continuous creative process—spontaneous, intimate character studies and observations executed in mixed media on these small Japanese papers. Gallery owners at Two Kats And A Cow, where Moran’s work is represented, note: “His quick wit, clever observations and fascination with words are a continuous thread throughout these mixed media works.”
The drawings often inform his comedy without him initially realizing it. “I was trying to figure out what the show should be about and the drawings were telling me but I was too busy doing them to notice.”
