Scottish painter, born and mainly active in Glasgow. After leaving school he worked for seven years as a maintenance engineer and steel fitter, and it was not until 1978, when he was 25, that he enrolled as a student at *Glasgow School of Art. Initially he was interested in *Performance art, but he turned to painting and soon made up for his late start, winning a Fulbright Scholarship that took him to New York in 1982, within months of graduating. He remained in New York until 1986 and as early as 1983 had two one-man shows, at Barbara Toll Fine Arts and the John Weber Gallery. These were well received and his success was an inspiration for younger Scottish artists: after his return to Scotland in 1986, Campbell became the focal point of a flourishing group of figurative painters in Glasgow (see Glasgow School), and ‘his achievement has done much to shape the evolution of Scottish painting in recent years’ (Duncan Macmillan).