British artist Gary O’Neil was born in Birmingham, England. The desire to draw, paint, make marks, and create pictures was apparent from a very early age. Influences were numerous and varied but images streaming on TV from the USA were particularly captivating, JFK, MLK, skyscrapers, mustangs, corvettes, the space race, and tall palm trees in the Californian sunshine; all were beguiling at that time. He would later travel throughout the USA and work alongside other artists for a number of years. Returning to the UK, he pioneered airbrushing, creating graffiti-style T-shirts for tourists in a number of English coastal resorts. Completing a BA Fine Arts degree, he achieved First-Class honours and was given the Ben Hartley Award at Plymouth University in 2011. He has now returned to his native Birmingham where he continues to make work using various strategies to investigate the language of painting.