Gerard M Burns

Gerard Matthew Burns was born in Glasgow in 1961, and graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1983 with a degree in Fine Art. Drawing and painting have been his abiding passion since childhood and lasted throughout a successful teaching career, eventually leaving his post as principal of art at St Aloysius College in Glasgow to pursue painting full time. Since 1999 this commitment has led to his current standing as one of Scotland’s most respected artists.

His bold tonal paintings, which focus on large-scale contemporary translations of traditional themes, demonstrate an astonishing photorealistic style and grace homes and workplaces worldwide. Burns is also regarded as one of the country’s foremost portrait painters and has painted two First Ministers as well as a variety of well-known faces from the worlds of film and entertainment, politics, business and sport. His portrasits can be seen hanging in the National Portrait Gallery, the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, and at Bute House in Edinburgh.

Burns lives in Cumbernauld with Ellen, his wife of 40 years, and has three sons, Matthew, Ryan and Patrick, and four grandchildren, Sophie, Emily, Caelan and Dylan.”