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Although born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1944, David Boyle started his artistic career in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the U.S.A. as a supermarket illustrator. It gets worse.

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In the days before mass production of advertising a local 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 style led his employer, Marvin Ritsma, to comment, “This ain’t no Picasso kind of a thing we’re doin’ here.  It’s just an ad for damn beans!”  Neither employer nor employee knew it was an Andy Warhol kind of thing and subsequently Boyle was fired. 

 

For a 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.  Having a voice like a hog caller seemed no impediment in this branch of entertainment.  He thus combined music with painting until he met a real singer, Charmaine Cross, who first agreed to be his singing partner and later his wife. 

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Travelling and singing around Europe they eventually settled in Scotland.  Having performed in concert halls, clubs and pubs (and even a cave in Lossiemouth) Boyle fell in love with the light and landscape of the North of Scotland and hoped to return some day with paints and brushes.  Some thirty 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 manipulating tide:  pools of beautiful and subtle colouration, amber seaweed, gemlike stones and soft evening light which delights and deceives the eye. 

 

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