Born in Islington, London in 1962 artist Andrea Byrne moved with her parents to Lancashire at the age of seven. She returned to London in 1986 where she continues to live and work.
After completing an Art Foundation Course in Blackburn, Lancashire she gained a B.A. (Hons) Fashion / Textiles from Liverpool John Moores University in 1984. Byrne went on to pursue an internationally successful career in fashion illustration, working for many leading advertising agencies, designers and design groups. She was also a regular fashion illustrator for the Sunday Times and her many clients ranged in diversity from Vogue, Saatchi & Saatchi to the Natural History Museum. In 1988 Byrne was awarded the highly acclaimed Guardian Fashion Illustration Award, representing and illustrating for the publication during Japanese Fashion Week in Tokyo.
During her extensive career she worked for many design houses and completed a series of important painting commissions for Aquascutum for their Spring 2003 international press campaign, which were simultaneously exhibited at their London Regent Street store. More recently she was commissioned to produce paintings for a book for the highly acclaimed U.S. fashion designer Josie Natori which cumulated in a solo exhibition of Byrne’s paintings at the Openhouse Gallery, Manhattan in November 2012.
Since 2000 Byrne has focused on large-scale paintings of flowers; originally her work was an extension of her involvement within contemporary fashion movements whist developing her distinctive painting style. Her first solo show in London in 2002 sold out, as did subsequent solo shows in ’03, ’04, ’06, ’07 and ’09. From early on Byrne’s large-scale paintings were featured in Vogue (2000) and more the 2012 Martyn Thompson Interiors book featured Byrne’s paintings in the New York home of loyal collectors creative director Andrew Egan and Sex And The City producer John Melfi; her work is also held in the collections of Andrea & Guy Dellal, John Whitney C.B.E and The East Lancashire Hospice. She was shortlisted for the Celeste Art Prize in 2006 and the winner of the AAF Artist Award in 2003. Byrne’s work features extensively in both private and corporate collections nationally and internationally.
Byrne studied for an M.A Fine Art at St. Martins School of Art, (2004) where her work moved into installation as well as painting. Her figurative paintings were exhibited as part of the On Time East Wing collection at the Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House London (2008 -2009). Byrne was awarded a further M.A. from Goldsmiths College in Aural & Visual Cultures in 2007.