Nick Bantock

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Nick Bantock (born 14 July 1949) is a British artist and author living on Saltspring Island, British Columbia. He is best known for The Griffin and Sabine Trilogy, a series famous for elaborate designs with faux postage stamps, handwritten notes, passports, postcards and other paper ephemera. The books are published by Raincoast Books in Canada and Chronicle Books in the United States.

Bantock studied in the northeast suburbs of London and later attended an art college in Maidstone, Kent. He began working as a freelance artist at 23, creating about 300 book covers over 16 years. In 1988 he moved to Vancouver, then to Bowen Island, where the idea for Griffin and Sabine came to him. In 1993 he won the Bill Duthie Bookseller's Choice Award for Sabine's Notebook.

In 2006 he adapted the Griffin and Sabine series into a stage play that opened in Vancouver at the Granville Island Stage (October 5 to November 4, 2006). In 2007 he began painting full-time again and opened a studio-gallery called The Forgetting Room on Saltspring Island. Between 2007 and 2010, Bantock was one of twelve people on the committee that helped choose Canada’s postage stamps.