Timeline
1918
Born in Tacoma, WA, raised in Salem, OR
1936-1938
Worked as a waiter, cook, booker, harvest hand and chief cook in the Marion County Jail, painting in spare time.
1939
First one-man show at Salem Federal Art Center; one-man show at Whyte Gallery, Washington, DC; Featured in Newsweek Magazine, Oct. 16 1939.
1940
Marries Canadian sculptor, Helen Nelson, influential in forming his commitment to social activism; Moved to Mexico; First child is born – Gale – Sept. 1940. Continues to develop as a painter, inspired by the vibrant people and landscape of Mexico
Retrospective show at Salem Federal Art Center; Byron and Helen settle in North Beach area of San Francisco.
1941-1942
1943-1945
Joins WWII effort as a Merchant Marine, where he was a member of Marine Cooks and Stewards Union, which had a strong communist element; Works as a ship’s baker and continues to paint, inspired by shipboard scenes and travels to Hawaii, South Pacific Islands, Australia, and New Zealand.
Served as an arts correspondent for a Canadian news agency in Yugoslavia for six months; Travels to Eastern Europe, painting and making prints of post war imagery, including a series from Poland on Jewish themes, featuring portraits of Jewish refugee children and rebuilding the Warsaw Ghetto.
1946-1947
1947-1948
Show of Yugoslav paintings, American Contemporary Gallery, Hollywood, CA; Show of Yugoslav prints in Toronto, Canada; Paintings included in 8th annual exhibition of the Society for Contemporary American Art, Chicago Art Institute.
Second child is born – Jonathan – May, 1948; Moves family to Mount Tamalpais / Mill Valley in San Francisco Bay Area; Illustrates Communist Manifesto in Pictures.
1948
Continues to show work in California, including a San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibition that included paintings by Robert McChesney and Emmy Lou Packard.
1949-1953
Flees to Canada with family due to anti-Communist hysteria prevalent in the United States at that time. Lives in Toronto and Montreal; As a card carrying member of the Communist party for seventeen years, Byron captured the attention of the FBI, which began an extensive dossier on Byron’s political views.
1953
Byron travels to Mexico City, training with Pablo O’Higgens, and becomes a member of Taller Grafica.
1954
1956-1958
One man show at Three Arts Gallery, Poughkeepsie, New York; Mural commissioned and executed by the young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association, Montreal, Canada; Tragedy strikes when Byron’s wife, Helen, is killed by a car while crossing the street with eight-year-old, Jon. Byron and his children return to San Francisco moving to Water St., which inspires a series of mixed media paintings.
Marries print-maker and muralist, Emmy Lou Packard, setting up a guesthouse and art gallery in Mendocino, California; Byron and Emmy Lou become founding members of Northern California’s chapter of the Peace and Freedom Party, organizing against the Vietnam War; As political and environmental activists, Byron and Emmy Lou are credited with playing a prominent role in the campaign to protect the Mendocino coastline from commercial exploitation; Byron’s only grandchild is born – Laura – 1963; Byron completes series in oils on Mexican themes, carved and printed a series of lino and wood blocks; Exhibition at the Salem Art Museum-Bush House of work between 1957 and 1960; Solo show, Ampex Gallery, Palo Alto, CA.
1959-1968
“Emmy Lou and I decided today to do a series of prints on the theme of peace. We will use skeletons as the central element, those being eminently suitable to the present human condition… we want to contribute. Must write a letter to President Kennedy urging not to resume nuclear tests. This would continue the spiral that must certainly at some point result in Doomsday for a great part of humanity.”
1962
Show of 30 prints in Moscow and the opening is televised on soviet Television.
1964
Byron retreats to Hawaii to work on watercolor series; Byron and Emmy Lou divorce upon his return.
1969-1970
Byron moves to Tomales, CA, where he converts a chicken coop into his studio and establishes a guest house and gallery space; Continues to travel, spends large amount of time in Hawaii; Meets third wife in 1982, Eve Wieland, who dies of cancer three years later.
1970-1980
Byron travels to Scotland, purchasing a flat near his daughter Gale in Inverness, Highlands; Lives in Inverness for over a year, painting a large series of watercolors inspired by the Scottish landscape.
1978-1979
1980-1989
Byron continues to paint in oils and watercolors, creating an extensive lino block series of small prints, dense and often veering on abstraction, titled the ‘Kicking the Moon’ series; With a life-long interest in labor and tools, Byron is credited by Guinness Book of Records with having the world’s largest collection of potato mashers.
As Byron’s health declined, Byron’s son Jon lived and cared for him in Tomales for the remainder of Byron’s life; Byron continued to produce many paintings during this time.