Roy Johnston was born in Pomeroy, County Tyrone in 1936 and is an artist, art critic and art historian. He studied painting at the Belfast College of Art (1962-66), Art Education at the University of South Wales and Monmouthshire (1968-69) and was awarded his Ph.D. at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1992 for his thesis on Roderic O’Conor.

Johnston was Head of Painting at the Ulster Polytechnic (1974-84) and has lived in the United States since 1987, where he was Head of Art at Skidmore College N.Y., and at Eastern Michigan University.

Since 1966 his work has been shown in Belfast, Dublin, Edinburgh, London, New York, Michigan and Ohio. He has also been included in several international touring exhibitions of Irish Art and major survey exhibitions including “Irish Art of the Seventies” at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. He is represented in the collections of the major museums in Ireland, the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, N.Y. and the Arts Councils of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Great Britain. Johnston is the leading authority on Roderic O’Conor.