James McMullan

Illustrator and poster designer James McMullan was born in Tsingtao, China, the grandson of Anglican missionaries. He immigrated to the United States at age 17 and studied for a year at the Cornish School of Allied Arts in Seattle. After Army service, McMullan moved to New York City and continued his art education at Pratt Institute. He began his career designing book jackets, and went on to create illustrations for magazines including Esquire, Sports Illustrated, and New York Magazine.

In 1976, McMullan created his first poster for a Broadway play. To date, he’s created more than 50 posters for productions at Lincoln Center Theater, including Anything Goes, Carousel, A Delicate Balance, and South Pacific. A collection and consideration of his art, The Theater Posters of James McMullan, was published in 1998. The next year, the Society of Illustrators mounted an exhibition of the posters.

McMullan is the illustrator of ten picture books written by his wife, Kate McMullan. I Stink!, the tale of a feisty garbage truck, was named a New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book of 2002, among its many awards. McMullan currently writes a column about drawing, Line by Line, for The New York Times. He has taught at New York’s School of Visual Arts, where he inaugurated the High-Focus Drawing Program.

McMullan lives with his wife in Sag Harbor, New York. His first project for the Postal Service is Innovative Choreographers (2012).