* JOHN BYRNE RSA (SCOTTISH 1940 - 2023)
THE RED TATTOO

limited edition mezzotint on paper, signed, titled and numbered 3/30
mounted, framed and under glass

image size 12cm x 15cm, overall size 38cm x 41cm

Note: Born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, John Byrne was one of the most inventive and contrary artists working in modern Scotland. Both stylistically and in terms of subject matter his work fizzes off in all directions, always however underpinned by technical mastery. He was also widely known for his work in the theatre and television, particularly The Slab Boys and Tutti Frutti. As a painter he is quite without parallel. As his friend Robbie Coltrane wrote in 2000 of Byrne's sketches: 'if I could draw like that I would give up everything else in my life'. Byrne gained entrance to Glasgow School of Art in 1958 and earned the admiration of his tutors and peers as his talent for drawing and painting became apparent. As critic Cordelia Oliver has said, before long Byrne ‘could draw like Millais.’ Considering the rules and regulations of the art school to be too stringent, however, he transferred to Edinburgh College of Art in 1961, only to return to Glasgow to complete his degree having found Edinburgh even worse. He went on to win the prestigious Bellahouston Award for painting and travelled to Italy to view the works of the Renaissance Masters. His mother said he started drawing in his pram. A year before entering the art school, he started at A. F. Stoddart & Co in Paisley - a “Technicolour hell hole” - as a “slab boy”. Much of what was to come, visually and literally, drew on what John observed there. John returned to the carpet factory in 1966 during which time he secured an exhibition - and his passport out of factory life - at the Portal Gallery, London under the pseudonym “Patrick”. Having passed himself off as a self-taught naïf, he was given an exhibition. The dream-like images that made up the show met with success. His ruse was uncovered and from here he went on to design record covers for The Beatles, Billy Connolly and Gerry Rafferty; and to co-write songs with the latter. From the early 1970s John diversified into writing, designing and directing stage and screen productions: Writer's Cramp (1977) and then a story of three workers in a Paisley carpet factory who dream of escaping to pursue a life in rock and roll in The Slab Boys (1978). In 1986 he wrote the cult television series Tutti Frutti, starring Robbie Coltrane, Emma Thompson and Richard Wilson, which tells the story of the silver jubilee tour of the rock band The Majestics. Perhaps because of the immense success of these productions his prodigious talent as an artist was temporarily over-shadowed and after the exhibition at Glasgow's Third Eye Centre in 1975 Byrne stopped exhibiting entirely and focussed on his other disciplines, only returning to exhibiting in 1991. In the decades that followed an extensive iconography unfolded amounting, in some cases, to a kind of pictorial autobiography. Paintings of 1950s Ferguslie Park - Feegie - captured what was once an invention, the “teenager”, as this strange new being emerged in the artist’s own youth. In his Underwood Lane series, the Teddy Boys who loiter are reminiscences of his own past. These pictures often referenced filmic and theatrical worlds, their backdrops lit like stage-sets. Nocturnal themes abounded: moonlit woods; the streets of 1950s Paisley; the self-examining artist, alone and wreathed in cigarette smoke. In a finely balanced act, he pulled together the macabre and humour. Byrne was awarded an MBE in 2002, but returned it because of the invasion of Iraq. He was elected RSA in 2007 and awarded honorary degrees by the universities of Stirling, Paisley, Dundee and Robert Gordon’s, Aberdeen. He married Alice Simpson in 1964. They had two children but divorced in 2014. He was also the father of twins with Tilda Swinton with whom he had a long relationship that ended in 2004. In 2014 he married Jeanine Davies. He was prolific in his output, his style is idiosyncratic, and he deliberately stands apart from artistic movements and trends. Eighty-nine of John Byrne's artworks are held in UK public collections including: National Galleries of Scotland, The Fleming Collection, Aberdeen Art Gallery, City Art Centre (Edinburgh), Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum, The Hunterian, Manchester Art Gallery, National Museum Cardiff, Paisley Museum & Art Gallery, The Peoples Palace & Winter Gardens, Perth Art Gallery, Royal Scottish Academy, St Andrews University, The Argyll Collection, Stirling University, Strathclyde University and the V&A.