Chris Achilleos


Chris Achilleos is a painter and illustrator who specialises in fantasy artwork and glamour illustration.

Biography

Born in Famagusta, Cyprus, his family emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1959, where he currently resides. He attended the Hornsey College of Art.
His work has appeared in Heavy Metal and Radio Times magazines, on book covers, and in collections of his own work. He has also participated in various film projects including Heavy Metal and Willow as a conceptual artist, and created a proposed poster for Blade Runner.
Achilleos created the controversial cover for Whitesnake's 1979 album, Lovehunter, which showed a naked woman straddling a giant serpent. In an interview with MelodicRock, Gary Hughes stated that Achilleos thereafter "had a policy of not working with bands". The original artwork, along with several other pieces, were stolen from him in the 1980s and sold to a private collector. However, he designed an album cover and artwork in 2003 with Gary Hughes' rock opera Once and Future King Part I. His influence was also felt in the Kate Bush video for "Babooshka", in which the character's costume resembles the cover portrait he did of the heroine of the 1978 novel Raven - Swordsmistress of Chaos.
Since 1990 he has mostly worked in designing fantasy trading cards as well as selling prints and original works of art.

Collections

Achilleos has published several book collections, including: