John Byrne RSA: Dead End

John Byrne's artistic career began in 1967 when he assumed the identity of the naive painter 'Patrick' for a series of shows at the Portal Gallery, London. A true renaissance man, Byrne is an artist, playwright and theatre designer whose paintings feature in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh and the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow. His paintings have an unresolved and dreamlike sense of narrative that includes references to mortality and Catholicism as well as 1950s Paisley.