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Born in Belfast in 1968, Gary Palmer attended the University of Edinburgh graduating with an MA in Architecture. He spent the following years traveling the world as an itinerant street artist. Since then his narrative chalk drawings have been featured in festivals in Europe, Australia and the US, and a book recording his work entitled A Carpet of Dream was published in 1996.

Travels in East Africa from the banks of lake Malawi to the exotic island of Zanzibar are the basis of a recent collection of narrative paintings and writings entitled ‘The Road to Zanzibar”, form a book, and print collection. The work from Zanzibar also gave rise to a teaching workshop for children entitled, ‘Mythmaker’, based on visual art and storytelling.

Gary has undertaken commissions for the Ulster Museum Belfast in the ceasefires of 1995, for Brent City Council in London and for mural for Sean Lenon. Gary’s work has been shown at the LA International, and his studio is now an official venue on the Venice Artwalk.

His current conceptual work – The ‘landscape distilled’ is a single black line of Japanese sumi ink that bleeds out into trees and rivers, wrapping around the room like a panoramic photograph. The installation was shown at Tarryn Teresa Gallery at Bergamot Station in May 2008.

More recently Gary has been writing and illustrating a series of children’s books and a co-writing a screenplay based on one of the stories.