Original Paintings and Sculpture
by Alan O'Cain

Some of the original paintings and other artworks displayed on this website are for sale, as are a number of other original works not shown. If you are interested in owning an original O'Cain artwork, or would like to commission something challenging and uncompromising please email. (Studio visits welcome.)

Exclusive hand-bound limited edition books
by Alan O'Cain & Juliet Lunn

The unique, collectable poetry editions and book-artworks below, bound and co-designed by Alan's wife Juliet, are created using the finest materials. Every book has 20% cotton acid-free 125gsm Italian paper pages and is produced by hand.

Courses in book-making are available. Visit www.abookinaday.co.uk.

for details of prices and how to buy please send an email:

The Meaning of Life

"A sublime little book" - J Gill Holland,
Professor Emeritus English, Davidson College, North Carolina

Alan's latest poetry collection features poems from 2008-2009. These exclusive pocket-sized A6 hardback books have original artwork covers, each individually painted and titled by Alan.

Handbound with a cloth spine, unique original art cover, coloured endpapers, A6-sized, 38 pages, (edition of 50 copies - signed, numbered)

White Rhino

White Rhino selects poems by Alan from 1981 to 2008 and presents them in these luxurious volumes, bound in red or blue Japanese silk or leopard print cloth, each having a unique combination of headband, book ribbon and coloured endpapers. [Leopard print not available.]

Handbound with a cloth cover, coloured endpapers, A5-sized, 70 pages, (edition of 40 copies - numbered, signed on request)

Just What Is It?

A small number of these poetry-artworks are still available.

Handbound with a cloth & printed paper cover, coloured endpaper, A6-sized, 16 pages, (edition of 13 copies - signed & numbered)

Limited Edition Prints
by Alan O'Cain

The small handmade prints below were created using a painstaking multiple-stencilling technique, involving the use of up to fifty stencils or templates. Each print is unique, varying slightly in subtle ways. Created mainly in acrylic paint, these dry-mounted prints have a glowing quality and will remain colour-true. The prints are sold mounted (and backed with) extra-thick conservation grade white mount card, and signed, titled, numbered and dated in pencil on the mount. Available framed if desired.

Starry Night at The Pleasure House

Created partially in Edvard Munch's studio in Ekely, these four small works show the most prominent feature of Munch's garden still present. Called by Munch his "pleasure house" the ring of trees stood directly outside the porch of his (now demolished) home. The trees featured in several of Munch's later works.

2008 - acrylic on paper - 11.5 x 11.5cm
(an edition of four - ONE REMAINING)

Winter Trees | Sheep in Fog

This print diptych is inspired by Sylvia Plath's two late poems. They were created especially for Alan's 2006 Hay Festival solo exhibition. (A small number remaining.)

2006 - acrylic on paper - each 12 x 13cm (size mounted 29 x 30cm)
£(an edition of sixteen - available as a pair only)

High-priced Windows

This print is inspired by a house: 105 Newland Park, Hull, the only dwelling Philip Larkin actually owned. "I have blindly, deafly and dumbly said I will buy an utterly undistinguished little modern house," he told Judy Egerton in 1974, and went on, "but I can't say it's the kind of dwelling that is eloquent of the nobility of the human spirit ... I feel like calling it 'The Old Mill' - everyone I know lives in something called The Old Mill or The Old Forge or The Old Rectory - or 'High Windows'. 'High-priced Windows' would be more like it."

'High Windows' was the title of Larkin's soon-to-be-published poetry book. His words to Judy Egerton were prescient. From the day he moved in, until his death in 1985, Larkin produced few new poems. Larkin's biographer Andrew Motion described 105 Newland Park with equally poetic flair: "... a two storey, raw-bricked 1950s building," he wrote, "defended from the road by a crudely pollarded tree, its façade dominated by a large white garage door. It was remarkably ugly and also inconvenient."

2006 - acrylic and sand on paper and card - 11 x 11cm (size mounted 31 x31cm)
(an edition of fourteen)