John Spooner

This article is about the Australian illustrator. For the U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, see John Coit Spooner.

John Spooner (born 1946) is an Australian illustrator who has regularly contributed to The Age newspaper.

John Spooner was born in Melbourne in 1946. He studied law at Monash University and practiced as a lawyer for three years. He commenced drawing for The Age newspaper in 1974, leaving the Law in 1977.

Spooner has received various awards for excellence in Journalism. Between 1985 and 1986 Spooner was awarded five Stanley Awards, including the Black and White Artist of the Year gold Stanley Award. In 1994 Spooner was awarded two Walkley Awards for Best Illustration and Best Cartoon. Spooner’s works are represented in the Collections of The National Gallery of Australia, National Library of Canberra, The National Gallery of Victoria, The Victorian State Library Art, The Melbourne Cricket Club Museum, public and private collections throughout Australia and internationally.

More recently, Spooner has become known for his hostility to the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). He has been accused of misrepresenting and cherry-picking from mainstream climate science to support his view. In December 2012, Spooner authored an opinion piece in The Age accusing the world's climate scientists and scientific bodies of shoddy, misleading research and reporting, and activists of alarmism and/or censorship. He described other notorious deniers such as Professors Richard Lindzen and Robert Carter as men of "integrity", "compassion" and "awesome perseverance" ("Sceptics Weather the Storm to Put Their Case on Climate", The Age, 29/12/12).

John's credits include five Stanley awards, three Walkley awards, the 1986 Fremantle Print Prize as well as the 2002 Graham Perkin Award for the Australian Journalist of the Year.

External links

• *Artwork by John Spooner
• 2001 Walkley Award – John Spooner for 'Moolah Ruse'
• John Spooner – 27 June 2004 article from The Age
• John Spooner cartoon collection, 1989–2000 – held and digitised by the National Library of Australia