John Skelton was born in Co. Armagh in the north of Ireland in 1925. He studied at Queen's University in Belfast, before enrolling in the Belfast College of Art. On graduating from the Belfast College of Art, he moved to London where he studied at St. Martin's School of Art. His paintings at this time were influenced by the Euston Road School of painters, a group of artists who focussed very much on representational painting in opposition to the various schools of modernist art that were prevalent in the late 1930's in London. In 1950, Skelton moved to Dublin, where he worked as an art director for an advertising agency, and also produced illustrations for various books.