ILLUSTRATOR Tony Meeuwissen is as particular about the pronunciation of his name ('Maywissen') as he is about his unique work. He likes to be in charge.

It is an outlook that has won him prestige projects and international acclaim. SNJ reporter David Gibbs spoke to the Houndscroft resident as a career retrospective got underway in Cheltenham.

"once you hit upon a good idea, a theme, just let your imagination run wild." Tony Meeuwissen has been doing that all his life, delighting generations and netting a sackful of awards along the way.

Born in Croydon in 1938, Tony has been immersed in the world of art since leaving school at 16, when he went to work for as an apprentice at a commercial arts studio in North London.

"I went straight into this big room full of artists, still life artists, figurative artists, illustrators and animators," he recalls. "I sort of picked things up by just observing what people were doing."

Five years later he joined the advertising world having developed a special interest in typography.

"If I was designing something I wanted to consider the typography as well," he says. "I like to be in overall charge of the project. I like to be in control of the idea that is put to the publisher."

In his late twenties Tony felt confident enough to launch himself into the world of freelance, rattling off speculative letters soliciting commissions to the likes of Penguin Books, The Sunday Times and Radio Times.

His boldness paid off and work started coming his way and with it, a flowering reputation. In the 1970s he illustrated the first of countless books - The Witch's Hat - a children's book with lots of pictures.

It was a format ideally suited to Tony. "There was a chance to put my best ideas of the time into a book," he says.

The Listener magazine nominated The Witch's Hat as the most beautifully illustrated book of 1975.

During the next eight years he illustrated a number of Penguin books, including the works of Paul Gallico and C S Lewis.

"At that time every church you went into there were these cream-covered books by C S Lewis," he remembers.

Over the years Tony has designed several sets of stamps for Royal Mail, his first five in 1984.

"It was about the nicest commission someone like me could get. It was a very free brief," Tony enthuses before adding with a laugh.

"My agent at the time said to me, 'Everyone is going to be licking your backside this Christmas'."

Metaphorically, many did. The Italians gave Tony their prestigious Francobollo d'oro award for the world's best stamp - an exquisite creation featuring a white dove and a blackbird together sheltering from the falling snow under an umbrella on which it had settled to form a map of the world.

"It was about opposites in harmony at Christmas," says Tony. A raft of awards followed for Tony, who has lived and worked in the Five Valleys for nearly 25 years.

In 1993 The Key to the Kingdom, a book of verse and companion playing cards, won him the W H Smith illustration award and one of two golds from the Designers and Art Directors Association, for most outstanding illustrations.

Five years later in 1998 his book Remarkable Animals received an honourable mention at the 1998 Bologna Book Fair.

And it is this book that has given its name to what Tony calls a "mini-retrospective" charting his work from the late 1960s to the present day currently showing at Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum.

In 2001 Tony's Royal Mail weather stamps were voted the most popular British stamps of 2001.

Having created illustrations for everything from books and stamps to record labels, playing cards and umbrellas, Tony offers a more exacting description of his vocation than the generic term of artist.

"I describe myself as a designer illustrator because I'm a sort of ideas person. If I'm going to do a book I dream up the idea for the book, what it's going to be. I don't just wait for people to ring," he says.

"The things I do look like what they are but they are stylised. I always like to get a bit of humour into pictures.

"You try to be individual. I met an American photographer in the swinging 60s and worked with him for a while. He said, 'Always try to be original in everything you do'. If you work at something long enough you usually do end up coming up with something fairly individual to you."

And Tony shows no sign of tiring of life in the creative fast lane. "I feel that I'm doing the better work now than I've ever done."

Tony Meeuwissen's Remarkable Animals exhibition is at the Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum in Clarence Street, Gallery 13, until Saturday, November 6.

It is open Monday to Saturday 10am to 5.20pm, except the first Thursday of the month when it opens from 11am. Admission is free.

For more information call the gallery on 01242 237431.