John Boyle was born in London, Ontario in 1941. With no formal art education, he has produced a major body of work that spans a career of five decades.

Boyle very quickly developed a distinctive vision which has remained consistent throughout his career. A figurative painter and strong Canadian nationalist, Boyle chooses Canadian heroes such as Tom Thomson, William Lyon McKenzie and Marshall McLuhan, as well as ordinary Canadians, and incorporates them in a background which holds reference to his own life in London, St. Catherine's, Owen Sound, Europe and Japan. Strong colour, richly patterned areas and figures spaced randomly throughout the paintings emphasise the direct response of the artist to his world. Boyle has experimented with different materials—pen and ink, oil, acrylic, watercolour, enamelled steel and bronze, adapting the various media to a variety of shaped canvases and boards.

First active in London in the 1960s, Boyle was included in the acclaimed 1968 National Gallery of Canada exhibition, The Heart of London. Since then he has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions, notably at the National Gallery of Canada in a catalogued exhibition entitled, The '60s in Canada in 2005. John Boyle's work is represented in the National Gallery of Canada, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in New Brunswick, Confederation Centre in Prince Edward Island, Art Gallery of Ontario, Hamilton Art Gallery, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, London Regional Gallery and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario.