Scottish Boy with Japanese Wonder Shell has been exhibited widely and was included in a show held at the Paisley Museum and Art Galleries in 2000 to mark Byrne's sixtieth birthday. 

John Byrne, born 1940

Born in Barshaw, Paisley, Byrne worked as a "slab boy" at A.F. Stoddard's carpet factory in Paisley after leaving school. He enrolled at Glasgow School of Art in 1958 to study painting, transferring to Edinburgh College of Art in 1961 for a year before returning to Glasgow. He was awarded the Newbery Medal and a travelling scholarship that allowed him to go to Italy in 1964. On his return to Scotland he worked as a graphic designer for Scottish television before going back to work for A.F. Stoddard as a carpet designer. During the 1960s and 1970s he produced a number of naive, dreamlike paintings influenced by Henri Rousseau, which he signed "Patrick" - his father's first name. These works were first exhibited in a one-man show in 1967 at the Portal Gallery in London. The exhibition attracted much attention as people speculated on the identity of the artist.
Byrne's interest in film and popular culture took off in earnest when he started working on an animated film with the singer Donovan in 1970. The following year they travelled to Hollywood but the film narrowly failed to gain a nomination for an Academy Award. After returning to Scotland Byrne began designing theatre sets for a wide variety of productions, including Billy Connolly's The Great Northern Welly Show. He also designed a number of record albums and painted the Beatles for the Illustrated Beatles Lyrics (the work is signed "Patrick").
Sometimes Byrne's prodigious talent as a painter has been in danger of being overshadowed by the immense success of his work for stage and television. The fact that his painting is not better known is also because in 1975 he decided not to exhibit any more pictures, and did not do so again until 1992, when his reputation as a writer and director was firmly established. His best-known success on stage are The Slab Boys and Tutti Frutti.
Throughout his career Byrne has been able to turn with equal success to writing for the stage and television and to theatre design, as well as painting and illustration in a bewildering variety of styles.