Author Kieron trying to put his life back on track

Author Kieron trying to put his life back on track

10 February 2021

TO lose your mother to cancer is hard enough but then to lose your father in a freak accident less than a year later was enough to curb the creative flow of well-known Killough illustrator and cartoonist Kieron Black.

Like many people dealing with grief of losing loved ones during the pandemic, coupled with the inertia that the lockdown inevitably brought, Kieron’s work came to a stop as the everyday care of his wife Yulia and daughter Penny became ever more important.

It might have taken 50 year-old Kieron months, even years, for him to pick up his creative work again had it not been for the devotion – and anticipation – of an eight year-old French boy eager to find out what happened next to the story told in his book, The Goblin’s Blue Blanket, which was published in 2018.

“It would be redundant, I think, to say that the last year and a bit has been a bit of a challenge,” explained Kieron, the son of respected UTV broadcaster, environmentalist and sailor Brian Black, who died in Strangford harbour last summer.

“For our family, it goes a little bit beyond that. We lost our mother Lesley to cancer in September 2019, shortly after that the global laugh-riot of Covid-19 hit, and then my father drowned in a freak accident last August.

“It’s sobering to think that globally this doesn’t even put our little collection of humans in the top 1,000 of those who can say, ‘We’ve had a tough time of it recently’.

“In amongst all this I kind of forgot that I was a published author. I certainly didn’t remember being a busy landscape artist, or a cartoonist, or a teacher, wrote and illustrated a children’s book, exhibited in New York, had a cartoon in Private Eye. No. You must be thinking of someone else.”

Kieron spoke with presenter Audrey Carville on Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence last Sunday about his art with the talk inevitably turned to his experience with grief from the loss of his parents.

Kieron, who is a regular teacher at Down Arts Centre in Downpatrick, admitted that he got caught up with the daily chores of being a husband and a father while grieving and trying, like most others, to keep themselves safe from Covid-19.

He forgot that he had just got his first cartoon in Private Eye – much to his delight and pride of his father who had talked with his son about buying viewing the magazine shortly before he died – and that his career was on the up.

However, out of the blue, a friend from Morzine in France got in contact with him just before Christmas to check in with him and reminding about his book, which became a cult classic with cartoon lovers, she mentioned that a little boy called Elliandé would be devastated that the sequel was not ready.

Kieron said: “It turned out that there’s a little boy called Elliandé who lives in a tiny Alpine village in France and he’s a huge fan of The Goblin’s Blue Blanket and he’s been waiting very patiently for the next instalment of the little green dude and his annoying ginger cat.

“It turned out that discovering this was all I needed to shake of the congealed wax of lethargy and the pandemic and grief and remember that I was a story-teller and an artist and I had created some pretty kooky little characters and given them a universe to live in and they deserved to have their stories told and I was the only one who could do it.”

After Kieron checked his work, he realised that not only did he have the sequel already written, but he also had a third book and several other major bits of work ready for publication.

Today Kieron launches a new project to the creative crowd-funding site, patreon.com, where he will be inviting sponsors to join him every stage of him creating a new story of Gerald the Annoying through inspiration, sketchbook work, art working, production, with a digital copy at the end.