Patrick Livingstone was born in Lurgan, Ireland in 1956, and spent all his childhood summers in Donegal, in the thatched cottage of his maternal grandparents, literally a stone’s throw from the sea. His grandfather was a lobsterman, and this early contact with the sea left a lasting impression. Livingstone began his painting career at the tender age of four, and was enormously encouraged by the reaction of his mother, to his somewhat immature efforts. This led to Livingstone practicing his watercolor technique to a degree not usually seen in one so young, with the aim of astonishing his parents still further. He sold his first painting at the age of twelve, and immediately spent the money on a set of paints.

His art teacher instilled a solid sense of composition and design, but it was the renowned landscape artist Cecil Maguire, who guided Livingstone through his early years as an oil painter, instilling a love of classical technique. To this day, Livingstone uses only the finest ground pigments, and the best quality linen canvas, using layers of glazing and scumbling to develop the luminous depth and richness in his work. Moving to London at the age of nineteen, Livingstone realized that the art schools of the day seemed only to encourage work of an abstract nature, and realized he would have to continue his training alone. He did this by spending hour after hour in both the National Gallery of London, and in the Tate, studying the techniques of the old masters. Often with his face only a few inches from the canvas, he caused the alarm to go off on more than one occasion. It was in this way that he developed his understanding of the methods by the old masters over hundreds of years of oil painting.

After five years of this study, supporting himself by various occupations ranging from publishing to house painting, Livingstone’s talent was recognized by Christies Contemporary Art and London Contemporary Art, who went on to publish over sixty of his watercolors over the next ten years, in a series of limited edition prints which have sold out. His first major commission was to paint all seven of the marine paintings which hang in the boardroom of Visa’s European Headquarters in Chester, England. In recent years he has moved to the southwest of France, where he lives with his wife and their daughter, in an old stone house close to the port of Bordeaux. It is here he has created his studio where he paints the marine paintings for which he is becoming increasingly well-known.

Livingstone has exhibited with Blackman and Harvey Gallery, London; London Contemporary Art, Chelsea, London; Medici Gallery, Mayfair, London; and Sir John Campbell Gallery, Belgravia, London, among others.