Errol Lloyd

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b. 1943, Lucea, Jamaica

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Errol Lloyd is a Jamaican-born British artist, writer, and illustrator working across painting, sculpture, and literature. He was educated at Munro College, Jamaica, where he excelled academically and in sport, representing the school in athletics, hockey, gymnastics, football, and debating, serving as Head Boy and gaining distinctions in all A-Level art examinations. A formative influence was visiting the studio of African American sculptor Richmond Barthé, who settled in Jamaica in 1948.

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Lloyd moved to the UK in 1963 to study law at the Council of Legal Education, during which he produced commissioned bronze portrait busts of figures including C. L. R. James, Sir Garfield Sobers, Richard Small, Lord Pitt, John La Rose, and Linton Kwesi Johnson. His bust of John La Rose was exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery (2004), and his painted portrait of Kamau Brathwaite, commissioned by Pembroke College, Cambridge (2019), is on permanent display in its dining hall.

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He was active in the Caribbean Artists Movement (1966–1972), a key force in Black British art, later designing book covers for Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, New Beacon Books, and Pearson Longman, and teaching Advanced Painting at Camden Arts Centre (1975–1976).

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As an illustrator, his first mainstream picture book (The Bodley Head) was Highly Commended for the Kate Greenaway Medal (1973). His novel Many Rivers to Cross (Random House, 1995) was nominated for the Carnegie Medal. His children’s books are widely used in the UK national curriculum and published internationally. His non-fiction Celebrating Black History (Oxford University Press, 2027) includes figures such as Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Marcus Garvey, C. L. R. James, and Una Marson. His plays have been staged by Carib Theatre, Tricycle Theatre, and Oxford Playhouse (from 1988), his poetry appears in anthologies, and he was one of 24 illustrators in Artists of the Page (McFarland & Co., 1992).

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Lloyd has exhibited widely, including No Colour Bar at Guildhall Art Gallery (2018); The Lie of the Land at Milton Keynes Gallery (2019), where his painting The Notting Hill Carnival was shown alongside Bridget Riley, J. M. W. Turner, Henry Moore, and Thomas Gainsborough; and Get Up Stand Up Now at Somerset House (2019). In 2022–2023, he co-curated an exhibition at Kettle’s Yard with Paul Dash and John Lyons, with the Fitzwilliam Museum, showing work alongside Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Pablo Picasso, and Graham Sutherland; his work was acquired by Kettle’s Yard and the NHS Imperial Health Charity Art Collection.

 

Recent exhibitions include 198 Gallery (2022–2023) and Paul Stolper Gallery (2023). The Domino Players was featured in The Guardian, and The Drummer – The Lion of Judah Roars in His Head was shown at Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music at the British Library (2024). His work has also appeared at the Whitworth Art Gallery (2022–2023) and Hepworth Wakefield (2023). In 2025, editions of The Drummer and The Lesson were published, and Nini at Carnival was reissued by Thames & Hudson. His writing has appeared in The New Beacon Review, Artrage, Moving Worlds, and publications by the British Library and Tate.

 

Honours include an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Newcastle University (2022) and Honorary Membership of the Youth Libraries Group (2025). He has made several hundred visits to UK schools and libraries and has served as a governor of Malorees Primary School and board member of the Tricycle Theatre and Future Histories for over twenty years.​