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Here, he transferred to the art department and by the age of 20, had been promoted to editorial cartoonist.
In 1959, Pat Oliphant was sent by his editors to study the work of professional cartoonists around the world. This included a visit to the United States of America, a country whose sheer size, audience and range of issues particularly attracted the ambitious young cartoonist. In 1964, he immigrated to the USA, taking up the role of editorial cartoonist for the Denver Post. In 1965, he began to syndicate his work, which began to appear in newspapers and magazines such as the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The New Yorker. In 1975, he moved to the Washington Star, where he would stay until it folded in 1981.
After leaving the Washington Star, Pat Oliphant opted for independence and syndication through the Universal Press Syndicate, producing five or six cartoons every week. By 1990, he was the most widely circulated political cartoonist in the world, with his cartoons appearing in more than 500 newspapers across the United States of America and a number of other countries, including his native Australia.
In the 1980s, Pat Oliphant began experimenting in other media, including lithography and sculpture. In 1990, a collection of presidential caricatures in cartoon, bronze and lithograph was exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. After eight months, the show travelled to several other US cities. A book, Oliphant’s Presidents: Twenty-Five Years of Caricature, was published to accompany the exhibition. In 1993, his exhibition 'The New World Order in Drawing and Sculpture' opened at the Austrian Embassy in Washington DC, before touring across Eastern Europe until 1995. Other major exhibitions of his work include 'Oliphant’s Anthem: Pat Oliphant at the Library of Congress' at the Library of Congress (1998), 'Oliphant in Santa Fe: Drawing, Caricature and Sculpture'at the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico (2000) and several presidential libraries and museums across the United States.
Pat Oliphant’s talents have been recognised through numerous awards across his career. In 1967, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning, despite having been critical of the award process, which he believed followed a formula and favoured jingoistic cartoons. His winning cartoon, published on 1 February 1966 and depicting Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War, supported these misgivings. The cartoon was chosen despite the fact that he was not particularly proud of it, and that its meaning had been changed by an editor without any consultation. The same year, he won the Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists. In 1969, he was presented with the Distinguished Service Award for Conservation from the National Wildlife Federation. He was voted the USA’s best editorial cartoonist in 1985 and 1987 by readers of the Washington Journalism Review and won the National Cartoonist Society Editorial Cartoon Award seven times between 1971 and 1991, as well as Reuben awards for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year in 1968 and 1972. He was presented with an honorary title from Dartmouth College in 1981. In 1992 he was a recipient of both the Thomas Nast Award in Landau, Germany, and the Premio Satira Politica in Forte dei Marmi, Italy. In 2013, he was awarded the Order of Australia, his native country’s highest civilian honour, by the Ambassador of Australia in Washington, DC. In the same year, the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015, he was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in New York City.
Pat Oliphant’s cartoons have been published in numerous collections, including Fashions for the New World Order (1991), Just Say No!: More Cartoons by Pat Oliphant (1992), Why Do I Feel Uneasy?: More Cartoons (1993), Oliphant: The New World Order in Drawing and Sculpture, 1983-1993 (1994), Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop… More Cartoons by Pat Oliphant (1994), Off to the Revolution: More Cartoons (1995), 101 Things to Do With a Conservative (1996) and So That’s Where They Came From (1997).
Pat Oliphant continued to produce three to four syndicated cartoons a week until his retirement from political cartooning in August 2014. In 2012, he took a three-month sabbatical from cartooning to take up a role as the Roy Lichtenstein Resident in the Arts at the American Academy in Rome. In the autumn of 2014, he took up a three-month residency as the Andrew Carnduff Ritchie Fellow in the Arts at Yale University Gallery and Museum of Art and Yale British Art Center.
Pat Oliphant currently lives and works with his wife, Susan Conway, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
His work is represented in the collections of the Library of Congress in Washington DC, the Smithsonian Institute National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Albuquerque Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Museum of New Mexico: Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Brooklyn Museum of Art in Brooklyn, New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the Detroit Institute of Arts in Detroit, Michigan, the Edmund S. Muskie Archives at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, Middlebury College Museum of Art in Middlebury, Vermont, the University Libraries of the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado and the Beinecke Library in New Haven, Connecticut.
