Now you can own a park
Gary’s famous painting auctioned for charity
A Paisley artist who’s immortalised his hometown in a massive painting is getting ready to auction it off for charity.
Garry Byars, who runs the Sunshine Gallery in the Paisley Centre, started working on his painting of Barshaw Park last May.
Working in his gallery, he started to attract a lot of attention from passers-by.
So he decided to let people be in the painting.
Anyone who wanted to be immortalised in the painting was asked to pay just £ 3 for a small figure at the back or £10 to be at the front.
The payments covered Garry’s costs but now he’s hoping to sell off the painting with all the proceeds going to the MS Society Scotland.
Garry said: “It has been great fun to work on and to meet everybody. It all started off as a bit of fun, painting all the various characters.
“Paisley is a very beautiful town and has stunning architecture.
“This went far beyond my expectation and with so many local Buddies participating, it was only right that the sale of the original painting should go to a charity.
“I have chosen MS Society Scotland as a very close family member had Multiple Sclerosis, and I hope my ‘Aw the Buddies at Barshaw Park’ painting can help in any small way to raise awareness about MS Society Scotland and the good work that they do.”
There are over 11,000 people living with MS in Scotland which makes MS more common per capita in Scotland than most other countries in the world.
The 30inch by 40inch painting features 164 real people, 20 Paisley businesses and a couple of famous characters including Paolo Nutini, Gerry Rafferty and artist John Byrne.
It looks down from the hill in Barshaw Park over the boating pond, with Paisley’s iconic architecture in the background.
It has been broken into five sections, with ‘Lowry’ characters in deep background and with more detail applied to each character as they get closer in perspective.
The painting will be auctioned on online site eBay from Thursday, June 28 and will end 10 days later on Sma’ Shot Day on July 7 at midnight.
For more information about the auction and to view the original paining with signed prints available, pop into the Sunshine Gallery at the Paisley Shopping Centre local market on level two.