Joe Austen

Tony Jacklin CBE, Sandy Lyle MBE & Joe Austen, with Roberto De Vicenzo, at The Gallery of Champions, in St Andrews. Joseph Gerard "Joe" Austen is a British artist, writer, producer and director from St Andrews, Scotland. Since 1976, a collection of his paintings has been on display in The Gallery of Champions within the Rusacks Hotel, St Andrews, Scotland. The Joe Austen gallery can be seen in full as an interactive virtual tour.

For the 150th The Open Championship in St. Andrews in 2010, six of golf's greatest champions were made Honorees of The Gallery of Champions when Austen painted their portraits. Those portraits are now a permanent part of the gallery.

In the Rusacks Hotel, Austen's painting collections are grouped into four separate categories; the Macdonald Collection, the Historical Collection, the Portraits of the Royal Captains The collections have been described as "portraits of golfing legends through the centuries", and the gallery was selected as the central location for the inaugural St Andrews Golf Festival in 2012 to showcase the strong links between St Andrews and golf.

Career Golf portraits

Tony Jacklin and Austen collaborated in 2014 to create The Tony Jacklin Ryder Cup Collection; a new series of hand-painted oil portraits and limited edition prints of those portraits, selected what he believed to be the 20 greatest players in the history of the Ryder Cup, and Austen painted their portraits. Limited edition prints of The Tony Jacklin Ryder Cup Collection have been available online since the Ryder Cup 2014.

In 2010, Austen undertook a similar venture to The Tony Jacklin Ryder Cup Collection, in collaboration with Rolex. To commemorate the 150th year of The Open Championship, Rolex commissioned Austen to paint a composite portrait co-designed by Jacklin and Nicklaus. He went on to create and develop The Magic House television series for Scottish Television. It ran for three seasons from 1994 to 1996 and Austen was involved in every aspect of its creation, acting as writer, illustrator, designer and on-screen storyteller and presenter.

Subsequently, The Magic House was developed into a puppet television series for the ITV Network. As writer, designer and associate producer of The Magic House television series, Austen wrote 55 scripts for three network series and designed the puppets, sets and cell-animated title sequences.

He then created The Magic Bank Club for TSB Bank, based on The Magic House, and aimed at promoting bank accounts for children.

After The Magic House book series had been out of print for a number of years, a Facebook group was created by fans in June 2010, called "Bring back the Magic House books (Joe Austen)" in an effort to have them reprinted, highlighting the dedication of his readers. In July 2014, the Facebook page had gathered 261 fans.

Story Store The Story Store is a concept for television and publishing developed by Austen. He went on to establish a new stop-frame model animation studio in central London in order to produce The Story Store television series for Carlton Television for the ITV Network in 1995. Austen developed the show and designed the puppets. a family entertainment company based in Dundee, with Richard Attenborough as company president. the company bought back ownership of more than 60 programmes and two dozen books created by Austen for various broadcasters and publishers. Austen said at the time that Storyland had paid a six-figure sum to bring these and other properties back into its ownership.