'His brilliance was limitless': Tributes to John Byrne as Scots cultural polymath dies aged 83

John Byrne – the creator of The Slab Boys and Tutti Frutti – has been hailed as ‘supremely talented’

Tributes have been paid to John Byrne, the cultural polymath whose prodigious output as an artist, screenwriter, playwright, designer, and illustrator secured him a reputation as one of modern Scotland’s most irrepressible and unique creative forces.

In a statement, the Fine Art Society said the 83 year-old died peacefully on Thursday with his wife, Jeanine, by his side, and hailed him as “one of the most inventive and versatile of all Scotland’s modern artists”. The announcement of his death prompted an outpouring of praise from figures and institutions across the worlds of the arts, politics, and wider civic Scotland.

Over the course of more than six decades, Byrne’s dizzyingly diverse artistic visions attracted international recognition and successive generations of admirers, yet nearly all were drawn from his own roots in the Renfrewshire town of Paisley. His eclectic body work was imbued with humour, playfulness and pathos, helping to transpose the nuances of the Scottish working class sensibility to cinema screens, stages and gallery walls.

First Minister Humza Yousaf led the tributes to Byrne, and said his thoughts were with the artist’s wife, Jeanine, and all who loved him. “There are not the words to do justice to the talents of John Byrne,” he said. “An extraordinary playwright, artist, and designer. Scotland has lost a cultural icon, and the world is less brighter with his passing.”

Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, who asked Byrne to illustrate her official Christmas card six years ago, said she was “terribly sad” to learn the “supremely talented playwright and artist” had died. She said: “He was one of Scotland’s most important cultural voices of modern times, and the loveliest of men.”

Although Byrne’s career was dominated by his life-long love of painting, he was best known for his parallel calling as a playwright and screenwriter. His acclaimed Slab Boys trilogy, a ribald and witty set of plays inspired by Byrne’s apprenticeship in Stoddard’s carpet factory in Elderslie, marked a major breakthrough.

In a statement, the Traverse Theatre, which staged the 1978 premiere of The Slab Boys, described Byrne’s contribution to Scotland’s cultural landscape as “incalculable”. The theatre said Byrne’s play, directed by David Hayman, marked a “world changing moment for Scottish theatre”, and helped champion the Scots vernacular into the international theatrical landscape, with the work going on to play off Broadway, starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Val Kilmer.

Tributes have been paid to John Byrne after the death of the artist and playwright. Picture: Robert Perry

“John’s life’s work brought smiles to the faces of millions who saw his work from his paintings, television work and, of course, his playwriting,” it added. “The Traverse is forever indebted to the vision and extraordinary multi-faceted talents, and we mourn alongside John's loved ones, and our hearts go out to them during this difficult time. His brilliance was limitless, and his legacy has gone on to make a huge contribution to what the Traverse and entire Scottish theatre sector is today.”

Byrne achieved wider fame in the 1980s thanks to Tutti Frutti, a six-part BBC drama he wrote about the Majestics, a faded rock ‘n’ roll band on a tour of provincial Scotland. The series served as a springboard for the careers of the late Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson.

Byrne revisited such seminal works time and again, reworking Tutti Frutti into a stage play, and producing Nova Scotia, a companion play that turned The Slab Boys into a quartet, as it followed its once sparky protagonist, Phil McCann, in the foothills of old age. Like the best of Byrne’s work, such creations were every bit as irreverent, thought-provoking and non-conformist as the man himself, blurring the lines between biography and fiction.

But Byrne’s work was as eclectic as it was prolific, spanning thumbnail storyboards to vast murals on tenement gable-ends. He worked as an album designer, producing covers for The Beatles, Donovan, and his close friend, Gerry Rafferty. At other times, Byrne was a children’s author, and a designer of theatre and costumes, such as the banana boots sported by another friend, Billy Connolly, during his Great Northern Welly Boot Show in 1972.

He worked long hours at his Edinburgh studio, starting at 8.30am and sometimes not finishing until 10pm. Not that it felt like work. “Most of my life I've been happy,” he once told The Scotsman. “If I'm industrious and occupied with the things I love, I'm happy.” Byrne’s exuberance, coupled with his extravagant, dandyish clothing, belied the darkness of his formative years.

In 2017, he revealed he was the child of an incestuous relationship between his mother, Alice, and his grandfather, but reconciled himself with the revelation, and channelled his emotions into his work. Byrne also became an unlikely focus of tabloid reporting following the breakdown of his relationship with the actor Tilda Swinton.

The artist, Alison Watt, described Byrne as “supremely gifted as an artist and playwright”, as well as being generous, funny, and “the most stylish man” she had ever met. Lachlan Goudie, the artist, writer and broadcaster, said Scotland and the world had lost a “Renaissance man”, adding: “We’ll miss him hugely, but his great paintings will keep luring us into his weird and wonderful imagination forevermore.”

Prof Penny Macbeth, director of Glasgow School of Art (GSA), where Byrne graduated in 1963, said: “John Byrne had a seminal influence on Scottish culture and society, both as an acclaimed artist and an award-winning playwright and theatre maker. He was and will continue to be an inspiration to generations of GSA students as well as to the wider creative community.”

In the last decade of his life, Byrne enjoyed retrospectives at the National Galleries of Scotland and Kelvingrove Art Gallery. And in his final years, Byrne said he had no regrets. “I wouldn’t change a thing about my life, because this is the life I have led,” he said in 2021. “I’ll be painting in purgatory. My mother swore I was drawing in the pram and I quite believe her.”