Beams exposed

Six years ago artist and illustrator Roger O’Reilly started creating illustrations of lighthouses across Britain and Ireland inspired by vintage travel posters. Chris Bond spoke to him.

IT’S fair to say that lighthouses loomed large in Roger O’Reilly’s childhood, growing up near the mouth of the River Boyne, on Ireland’s east coast. “A few minutes from my door were three unusual estuarine lighthouses perched among the sand dunes. Drogheda North, East and West lights were truncated structures gazing forlornly out to sea and only coming to life as the dusk crept in,” he says.

“As kids we used to cycle down there because it was a lovely part of the beach, and when the lights came on in the evening we knew it was time to go home. So they were very much a part of my growing up.” Even so, it wasn’t until decades later, when a hankering for the salty sea air brought him back to the coast, that they once again became a focal point in his life. Roger started out as a storyboard artist for advertising and films before he began making old railway-style posters that echoed those from the 1930s and 40s.

In 2017, he began illustrating the lighthouses around Ireland’s south coast. This quickly grew into a collection that culminated in an awardwinning book, Lighthouses of Ireland. Then, during a holiday in Cornwall, he started drawing studies of harbours and lights on the Cornish and Devon coasts and the idea of a new project, the Lighthouses of Britain, started. “I got out a map and started looking how many lighthouses there are, and I thought ‘you know what, I could do the whole lot.’”

His collection of illustrations, based on his drawings and sketches, now runs to over 350 lighthouses, as well as more than 100 smaller lights which provide navigation to our estuaries, harbour approaches and rivers. And it’s still a work in progress. Prints of his illustrations are available to buy with a new book featuring some of his prints, and their stories, due out next year.