Kerry Waghorn is a syndicated caricaturist whose Faces in the News feature, established in 1977 by Chronicle Features (San Francisco Chronicle) is a journalistic legend. He estimates that more than 9,000 of his images have been published since the early 1970s, including just about every prominent news, business and entertainment face over that span of history. During the many years he spent under the management of newspaper icon G. Stanleigh Arnold, the Chronicle's Sunday and Features Editor, he refined his skills within a team that included Garry Trudeau

Garry Trudeau

Garretson Beekman "Garry" Trudeau is an American cartoonist, best known for the Doonesbury comic strip.-Background and education:...

 (Doonesbury), Gary Larson

Gary Larson

Gary Larson is the creator of The Far Side, a single-panel cartoon series that was syndicated internationally to newspapers for 15 years. The series ended with Larson's retirement on January 1, 1995. His 23 books of collected cartoons have combined sales of more than 45 million...

 (The Far Side), Abigail Van Buren (Dear Abby), William Hamilton

William Hamilton

-Europeans:Politicians and noblemen*William Hamilton, 2nd Duke of Hamilton , Scottish nobleman*William Douglas-Hamilton, Duke of Hamilton , Scottish Nobleman*William Hamilton , Lord Chancellor of England...

 (of The New Yorker), Phil Frank

Phil Frank

Phil Frank was an American cartoonist best known as the creator of the San Francisco-based comic strip Farley and the artist on nationally syndicated comic strip The Elderberries...

 (Fraley), and Cathy Guisewite

Cathy Guisewite

Cathy Lee Guisewite is the cartoonist who created the comic strip Cathy, about a career woman facing the issues and challenges of eating, work, relationships, and being a mother. As Cathy put it in one of her strips, "The four basic guilt groups."Born in Dayton, Ohio, Guisewite grew up in Midland,...

 (Cathy). Arnold had also been instrumental in the early stages of Charles Schulz' (Peanuts) career. Waghorn, who resides in West Vancouver, B.C., is currently represented by Universal Press Syndicate

Universal Press Syndicate

Universal Press Syndicate, a subsidiary of Andrews McMeel Universal, is the world's largest independent press syndicate. It distributes lifestyle and opinion columns, comic strips and other content. Popular columns include Dear Abby, Ann Coulter, Roger Ebert and News of the Weird...

 of Kansas City, MO, and he continues to create about three new caricatures a week. Universal, a subsidiary of Jim Andrews and John McMeel's Andrews McMeel Universal, founded in 1970, purchased Chronicle Features in 1997.

Biography and background

Kerry was born and raised in North Vancouver, B.C., the son of Raymond and Morah Waghorn. His father, also born in British Columbia, was a coppersmith in the vibrant shipbuilding industry of North Vancouver. His mother, born in Louisbourg, N.S. on Canada's east coast, moved at a young age with her family to British Columbia. Kerry has one younger brother, Dean.

Kerry graduated from North Vancouver High School in 1965 and soon after attended the recently opened Simon Fraser University

Simon Fraser University

Simon Fraser University is a Canadian public research university in British Columbia with its main campus on Burnaby Mountain in Burnaby, and satellite campuses in Vancouver and Surrey. The main campus in Burnaby, located from downtown Vancouver, was established in 1965 and has more than 34,000...

 in nearby Burnaby, intending to study political science. He immediately became involved with the student newspaper The Peak as an editorial artist and layout editor. When SFU became a Canadian focal point of student and teacher protests, including the occupation of the administration buildings, Kerry's news career became so dominant he lost all interest in academic pursuits. The leap from the student press to underground newspapers and, subsequently, mainstream media became a logical progression.

During the student days his preoccupations included playing the drums in a succession of rock bands and also working on fishing boats along the B.C. coast. Yet everything he did came back to art: sketches of fishing boats, captains and crew; and drawings of rock musicians in multiple poses and situations.

It was the latter work that attracted the attention of the rock promoters of the late 1960s. Kerry's first commission was a poster advertising an upcoming concert by vocalist Laura Nyro. He was invited into a partnership with poster artist Bob Masse

Bob Masse

Bob Masse is from Canada's west coast and has been producing concert posters since the 1960s. While attending art school in Vancouver, British Columbia, he began his career doing posters for the folk acts that came through town, in exchange for free drinks, tickets, and the opportunity to meet the...

 and moved into Masse's studio in Vancouver's Gastown. Posters for concerts of Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...

, Elton John

Elton John

Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...

, the Beach Boys, Boz Scaggs

Boz Scaggs

William Royce "Boz" Scaggs is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. He gained fame in the 1970s with several Top 20 hit singles in the United States, along with the #2 album, Silk Degrees. Scaggs continues to write, record music and tour.-Early life and career:Scaggs was born in Canton,...

, Chicago

Chicago (band)

Chicago is an American rock band formed in 1967 in Chicago, Illinois. The self-described "rock and roll band with horns" began as a politically charged, sometimes experimental, rock band and later moved to a predominantly softer sound, becoming famous for producing a number of hit ballads. They had...

, Grand Funk, Canned Heat

Canned Heat

Canned Heat is a blues-rock/boogie rock band that formed in Los Angeles, California in 1965. The group has been noted for its own interpretations of blues material as well as for efforts to promote the interest in this type of music and its original artists...

, Doobie Brothers. Taj Mahal

Taj Mahal (musician)

Henry Saint Clair Fredericks , who uses the stage name Taj Mahal, is an American Grammy Award winning blues musician. He incorporates elements of world music into his music...

 and many others followed.

During this era, The Georgia Straight

The Georgia Straight

The Georgia Straight is a free Canadian weekly news and entertainment newspaper published in Vancouver, British Columbia, by the Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp...

, a trend-setting and controversial flagship of the underground press (still going strong in 2010), began publishing his cartoons. The Straight syndicated his work to a number of alternative newspapers, including the Los Angeles Free Press

Los Angeles Free Press

The Los Angeles Free Press , also called “the Freep”, was among the most widely distributed underground newspapers of the 1960s. It is often cited as the first such newspaper...

, the Detroit Free Press

Detroit Free Press

The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The Sunday edition is entitled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "Freep"...

 and The Berkeley Barb. Mainstream media would soon follow.

Newspapers and syndication

From these first public roots at SFU's Peak, the rock posters and The Straight, he eventually graduated to the city's largest daily, The Vancouver Sun, as a regular contributor. One day he walked uninvited into the offices of The Sun and asked to see the newspaper's nationally recognized editorial cartoonist, Roy Peterson. Peterson was a welcoming host, critically reviewing Kerry's portfolio.

His work for The Sun would rapidly elevate his craft into the mainstream, learning as fast as he could from two masters, Peterson, and the equally famous local icon, Len Norris

Len Norris

Leonard Matheson Norris, better known as Len Norris , was a longtime editorial cartoonist for the Canadian newspaper Vancouver Sun from 1950 to 1988...

. Peterson was an accomplished news and political cartoonist, but Norris had a different gift. Len Norris was the pulse of a nation, beloved by all. His characters were every man, and every woman, frequently sitting in their kitchen and living room making poignant and sometimes hilarious comments about the world around them.

Visiting San Francisco in 1971 with his partner in the production of rock music posters, Kerry decided to pop into The Chronicle unannounced, hoping to show his art portfolio to cartoonist Robert Graysmith, who later achieved fame as the author of the book and subsequent motion picture about the Zodiac murders. The receptionist advised that Mr. Graysmith was not in but, after Kerry explained who he was and what he did, she asked if he would like to meet the Sunday Features Editor? Somewhat overwhelmed by his good fortune, Kerry was escorted in to meet Stan Arnold. This was the chance meeting that would change Kerry's life. Arnold, who died in 1997, would become Kerry's mentor, manager, car pool partner, best friend and fishing buddy.

Shortly after that fortuitous first meeting, Kerry began a life of two cities, migrating back and forth between Vancouver and San Francisco, and contributing to both daily newspapers, among other clients.

But San Francisco was indisputably big time and Chronicle Features, under Arnold and Stuart Dodds (principal marketing executive when Kerry began and Arnold's successor as editor) had become one of the most formidable syndication services in the newspaper world. Eventually, Kerry Waghorn moved to San Francisco, where he lived for 10 of the happiest years of his life.

Gradually, something else began to evolve within his work. Out of his art and cartoon creations, a unique gift began to dominate, and that was his talent for caricature, seeming to be able to drag the depths of a subject's soul and personality, into the visible plane. Chronicle Features launched Faces in the News by Kerry Waghorn in 1977. "I felt truly gifted during that era - with Stan Arnold's guidance and Stuart Dodds' incredible salesmanship, my work started appearing all over the world," Kerry remembers.

He pays tribute to David Levine

David Levine

David Levine was an American artist and illustrator best known for his caricatures in The New York Review of Books. Jules Feiffer has called him "the greatest caricaturist of the last half of the 20th Century".-Early life and education:Levine was born in Brooklyn, where his father Harry ran a...

 of The New York Review of Books as a personal inspiration. Following Levine's death at the end of 2009, Kerry Waghorn issued this statement: "In caricature to me he was simply the greatest and still, to this day, it brings me a great deal of pleasure to look at his work."

A Universal subsidiary website (www.ucomics.com) characterized Kerry's work as follows:

"The image is worth a thousand words, and no one can put it like Kerry Waghorn. His caricatures are topical, highly detailed and skilfully drawn. The personality of his subject is always reflected in his illustration. He not only captures features, he captures character. From political figures to sports figures to corporate bigwigs, no face is safe from the scrutiny of Waghorn's pen. He uses his illustrations to satirize his subjects."

Waghorn today

Today, Kerry enjoys the most extensive caricature service in the world. Waghorn's caricatures appear as a daily feature in many countries. His drawings have been published in more than 700 major newspapers and magazines world-wide, representing about 60 nations. Among the journals that have published his creations are the Miami Herald, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...

, The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, New York Daily News

New York Daily News

The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....

, Atlanta Journal, Montreal Gazette, Japan Times, Sydney Morning Herald, Hamilton Bermuda Business, Korea Times and New Zealand Herald.

Included among the more familiar personalities who have acquired their original caricature by Waghorn are Tom Selleck

Tom Selleck

Thomas William "Tom" Selleck is an American actor, and film producer. He is best known for his starring role as Hawaii-based private investigator Thomas Magnum on the 1980s television show Magnum, P.I.. He also plays Police Chief Jesse Stone in a series of made-for-TV movies based on the Robert B....

, Chevy Chase

Chevy Chase

Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase is an American comedian, writer, and television and film actor, born into a prominent entertainment industry family. Chase worked a plethora of odd jobs before moving into comedy acting with National Lampoon...

, Michael Ovitz

Michael Ovitz

Michael S. Ovitz is an American talent agent who co-founded Creative Artists Agency in 1975 and served as its chairman until 1995. Ovitz later served as President of the Walt Disney Company from October 1995 to January 1997....

, Bryan Adams

Bryan Adams

Bryan Adams, is a Canadian rock singer-songwriter, guitarist, bassist, producer, actor and photographer. Adams has won dozens of awards and nominations, including 20 Juno Awards among 56 nominations. He has also received 15 Grammy Award nominations including a win for Best Song Written...

, Billy Joel

Billy Joel

William Martin "Billy" Joel is an American musician and pianist, singer-songwriter, and classical composer. Since releasing his first hit song, "Piano Man", in 1973, Joel has become the sixth best-selling recording artist and the third best-selling solo artist in the United States, according to...

, Bruce Willis

Bruce Willis

Walter Bruce Willis , better known as Bruce Willis, is an American actor, producer, and musician. His career began in television in the 1980s and has continued both in television and film since, including comedic, dramatic, and action roles...

, David Bowie

David Bowie

David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...

, Michael Eisner

Michael Eisner

Michael Dammann Eisner is an American businessman. He was the chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company from 1984 until 2005.-Early life:...

, Malcolm Forbes

Malcolm Forbes

Malcolm Stevenson Forbes was publisher of Forbes magazine, founded by his father B. C. Forbes and today run by his son Steve Forbes.-Life and career:...

, Greg Norman

Greg Norman

Gregory John Norman AO is an Australian professional golfer and entrepreneur who spent 331 weeks as the world's Number 1 ranked golfer in the 1980s and 1990s...

, Chris Evert

Chris Evert

Christine Marie "Chris" Evert is a former world number 1 professional tennis player from the United States. She won 18 Grand Slam singles championships, including a record seven championships at the French Open and a record six championships at the U.S. Open. She was the year-ending World No...

, Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson

Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...

 and numerous U.S. and world political leaders.

One of his sideline projects during 2005 and 2006 was illustrating a book, a comprehensive expose of Canada's health management, titled Squandering Billions. This required frequent meetings with journalist/author Gary Bannerman

Gary Bannerman

Gary William Bannerman was a broadcaster, writer and corporate communications consultant based in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada, and the author of several books...

 and co-author Dr. Don Nixdorf, a noted Canadian health professional.

Kerry's parents and a brother, who all are in good health, live in North Vancouver, B.C., where his studio is located. He remained a bachelor until 2009. A few years ago - following an encounter arranged by a mutual friend - Kerry rekindled a relationship with Amber (Campbell), an interior designer, who had been his prime romantic interest during school years. Amber and Kerry were married in April 2009 and now reside on the waterfront in West Vancouver, overlooking spectacular English Bay.

Kerry has little time for hobbies, but enjoys dominoes and fishing for the big Pacific Coast salmon. Among his most memorable adventures since returning from San Francisco have been long boat trips up the coast as far as Alaska with his friend, songwriter and recording star Terry Jacks

Terry Jacks

Terrence Ross "Terry" Jacks is a Canadian singer, songwriter, record producer and environmentalist.-Early life:...

(Seasons in the Sun, The Poppy Family et al.), an environmentalist and passionate outdoors-man.

Books

• Writing in the Rain (Harbour Publishing, 1990) ISBN 1-55017-010.4 (by Harold White, cover and illustrations by Kerry Waghorn).

• Squandering Billions (Hancock House, 2005) ISBN 0-88839-604-X (with Gary Bannerman and Dr. Don Nixdorf) - a brutally frank indictment of health spending. www.squanderingbillions.net

Articles

• Desbarats, Peter and Moser, Terry; The Hecklers; McLelland and Stewart, National Film Board of Canada; Toronto, 1979

• The North Shore News, North Vancouver, B.C.; Evelyn Jacobs; Aug. 19,1992; "Waghorn accepts fame with modesty."
• Vancouver Magazine, Vancouver B.C.; March 1993; "Drawing the Lines"

• West Vancouver Lifestyle, West Vancouver, B.C.; Greg Potter; March, 1995; "The Pen and the Ink."

• The Vancouver Sun, Vancouver, B.C.; Oct. 4, 1997; John Mackie; "Brushed by Fame"

• Office@Home, Vancouver, B.C.; Winter 2002; Dave Strapps; "Kerry Waghorn Illustrated"

External links

• www.kerrywaghorn.com Official website