Description

"Dots, spots, dashes, arcs, lines, smudges, smears, stains : groping, searching, floundering to arrive at some form of truth or other... . Attempting to utter a statement : sometimes coherent, sometimes not. And the utterance could stretch to a cry, a wail, a moan"- Mickey Patel

Mickey Patel (1941–1994) was an Indian cartoonist and illustrator of books and magazines, as well as a painter and designer. He was born in 1941 in Lahore and studied economics at St. Stephen's College, Delhi. Mickey began his career in advertising and worked with Lintas, Thompson and ASP and Clarion. However he later started illustrating children’s books, in which he found his calling and hence began his career as a freelance illustrator and cartoonist.

Patel illustrated and produced several children's books for prominent authors like Ruskin Bond and Sigrun Srivastava, as well as his own titled ‘The Story of a Panther’, published posthumously. Patel’s works have featured in newspapers and magazines such as India Today, Reader's Digest, Business Standard, Hindustan Times, and The Illustrated Weekly of India.

His work won the prestigious Noma Concours award by UNESCO for picture book illustrations in the years 1978, 1984 and 1986. Mickey Patel passed away in 1994.