Illustrator Meirion Dole spent his youth close to the coastal town of Llanelli in South Wales and now lives in Delfshaven, a corner of the port town of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

For Meirion, art education began at the Carmarthenshire College of Technology and Art and later at Newcastle Polytechnic (1989-1991), graduating in Illustration and Graphic Design. The move to the Netherlands followed soon after. It was (then) the country with the beautiful bright banknotes and the dog nose shaped driver’s cabins on the yellow trains, and of sugar and spice and many things nice.

The sweet tooth, yet to be tamed, would make everything, eventually, stick.

He has been an employee at the same sign studio for over 25 years, and confesses to having painted many large-format logos on various velodrome track surfaces throughout Europe with the greatest of satisfaction.

Freelance illustration work had gotten off to a very slow start and had staggered to a halt. However, during his working life he has kept his desire alight to create illustration work, varying widely in disciplines, botanical illustration amongst them

More recent involvement in group projects has been instrumental in “fanning the furnace” and moved him to increase his output as an illustrator and search for opportunities to bring the work under the public’s gaze.

When otherwise engaged, he shares the hours and the days with his wife and life-partner at their flat or in their allotment garden within ear shot of the city zoo… and the train track.