Artist, designer and illustrator Graham Percy was a highly regarded figure in both Britain and the United States for his graphic designs, children's book illustrations – including The Wind in the Willows – as well as illustrations for adults.

The large-scale series Alchemical Allotments are darker in tone to his earlier works.
These map-like garden allotments in deep washed greys and blacks depict symbology relating to planting by the moon and relate to an awareness of mortality and ideas of the afterlife, an order in the universe beyond what the artist could see.

The City Art Collection includes two works from ‘The Imaginative Life and Times of Graham Percy’, a major posthumous exhibition of his work which was shown at public galleries throughout New Zealand, including City Gallery Wellington. These illustrations of ‘imagined histories’ depict an eclectic host of characters who go about their activities with strangely serene and determined attitudes.

Graham Percy (born 1938, Auckland – died 2008, Surrey) graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland in 1967, winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, London, then working on illustrations for the New Zealand School Journal in the 1960s. Percy designed the typography for several Colin McCahon's exhibition invitations and set up one of New Zealand's first design consultancies. From late 1964 until the end of his life, Percy lived and worked in London as an illustrator and artist and was the production designer on the 1973 animated film Hugo the Hippo. Percy specialised in children's books, illustrating more than 100 works for children, and produced a body of his own independent art for adults.