As Frank Sinatra sang, you’ve either got or you haven’t got style. John Patrick Byrne has it. And, yes, it stands out a mile.
Paisley-born Byrne, 82, has been at the forefront of Scottish cultural life for six decades; as artist, designer and storyteller.
From early gable-end murals around Glasgow, to album covers for The Beatles, Donovan and Gerry Rafferty, to writing cultural touchstones such as the 1987 TV series Tutti Frutti, Byrne’s creative fire has burned brightly.
© Martin ShieldsNow, he has been recognised with a major retrospective exhibition, John Byrne: A Big Adventure – Artist, Writer and Theatre Maker, at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.
The sweep of Byrne’s output is astonishing. Visitors are confronted immediately by The American Boy, a giant oil painting from 1971. The exhibition starts with early work, made at the Glasgow School of Art in the early 1960s. A highlight is a room displaying more than 40 self-portraits, the most displayed at one time. The earliest, from 1963, depicts his time in Perugia, Italy. The latest is from 2020.
The exhibition is peppered with portraits of friends like Rafferty, Billy Connolly, Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson. My favourite Byrne portrait, though, is of Rafferty on an old Martin D-35 acoustic guitar.
There are paintings, drawings and designs from all Byrne’s plays and TV series, including The Slab Boys and Tutti Frutti. His most revealing works, however, are portraits of his nearest and dearest.
Feeling the Byrne: Retrospective show hails artist’s towering 60-year career
A couple of his drawings made with conté crayons are breathtaking; particularly ones of stepdaughter Rebecca, in 2010, and daughter Celie in 1973.
I also loved Jeanine With Flowers, a gorgeously rich oil painting of his wife.
Self-reflection, a painting of Tilda Swinton and Byrne’s twins, Xavier and Honor, exudes energy.
A must-see.
Brooklyn-based Scottish artist, Catriona Herd, has exhibited in Manhattan, Edinburgh, Oxford and Frankfurt. Throughout June, the painter, who trained in Dundee in the 1980s, has a new exhibition with Manhattan-based American artist Kathleen Gefell.
Herd and Gefell are showing their latest work in About Color at the Live 4 Art Gallery in Pawling, New York. Herd paints joyfully colourful landscapes in oil inspired from plein air sketching trips to mainland Europe, Scotland, the US and England.
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