Although born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1944, David Boyle started his artistic career in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the USA as a supermarket illustrator, It gets worse (he tells us!) In the days before mass production of advertising a supermarket hired Boyle to produce illustrations of soup and bean cans for the minimum wage of $1.22 an hour. Unfortunately, although the illustrations were passable, his lack of speed and fastidious led his employer Marvin Ritsma, to comment “this ain’t no Picasso kind of thing were doing here, it’s just an add for damn beans”. Neither employer or employee knew it was an Andy Warhol kind a thing.Subsequently, Boyle was fired.
For the time the artist eked out a meagre living at Lake Michigan painting cartoon illustrations on the fashionable white beach shirts of the day.
Until the Northern winter arrived and he discovered folk music.
Travelling and singing around Europe David and his wife Charmaine eventually settled in Scotland. David fell in love with the light and landscape of the North of Scotland and hoped to return someday with paints and brushes. Some 30 years later having worked as a lecturer, broadcaster and illustrator this ambition was fulfilled.
Recent paintings have concentrated on that magical space between land and sea revealed by the ever surprising and manipulated tide: pools of beautiful and subtle colouration, amber seaweed, gem like stones and soft evening light which delights and deceives the eye.
