Escape to the North Drawing

British Artist, born in Glasgow 1945. Studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1964-66 and 1968-70. He has lived and worked in Toronto, Canada and in Glasgow, UK. While he was a student at art school he began to develop his unique style. His older brother Ronald Birrell, who was also an artist, was a major influence on his work at this time. His first paintings were figure compositions and industrial landscapes. His work is difficult to categorise, not simply realist, figurative, surrealist, historical, or combinations of these. Birrell's work usually contains figures in rooms or in imagined landscapes, often female, creating a potent atmosphere of disquiet or harmony. It is the creation of this atmosphere that is important to him. He works mostly in oil paint and inks, transferring his preliminary ideas from card and paper to board and canvas. The most important influences on his work were his brother Ronald, now deceased. And painters such as Piero Della Francesca, Giorgio di Chirico and Paul Nash.