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John Byrne

John Byrne

John Byrne was born in Paisley in 1940 and brought up in Ferguslie Park housing scheme. A graduate of Glasgow School of Art, the young Byrne tricked his way out of a monotonous job in a local carpet factory by posing as ‘Patrick’, a self-taught painter of faux-naif images. Although quick to confess to the ruse, as ‘Patrick’, John Byrne found that his painting career took off and his work reached a wide audience in the form of record covers for the Beatles, Gerry Rafferty and Billy Connolly. Paisley’s Renaissance Man has written, designed and directed stage and screen productions, including “The Slab Boys” and “Tutti Frutti”, but he is primarily a visual artist.

National Velvet and The Studio demonstrate stunning attention to detail through masterful and idiosyncratic command of the medium of oil paint. Due to the large scale of the paintings, they possess monumental presence which reflects the confidence of pop art and American culture to which Byrne felt particularly drawn at the time.
John Byrne’s biography is a fascinating tale of a local Paisley lad’s rise to fame.As John Byrne himself said “from Darkwood Crescent to Sunset Boulevard ”

All copy thanks to www.johnbyrneart.co.uk