Born in Co. Armagh in 1925, John Skelton studied at Queens University Belfast, at the Belfast College of Art and at St Martin’s School of Art, in London. It was in London that he started his professional career and where he came under the influence of the Euston Road School in the late 1940s. He then moved to Dublin in 1950, working as an advertising art director and illustrator of books, but from 1975, he worked full-time as a painter. John Skelton had numerous one man shows in Dublin and Belfast, but also as far afield as Connecticut and Los Angeles and during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s he earned a reputation as a gifted teacher and lecturer in the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. During this period, and indeed right through the 1980s, he exhibited frequently, including the annual Royal Hibernian Academy Exhibition and the Watercolour Society of Ireland. John Skelton was a gifted artist, whose depiction of life, particularly in the West of Ireland, made his work most recognizable and sought after.