Jon Campbell (b. 1961) came to Australia from Northern Ireland as a three-year-old. He completed his BA in Fine Arts at RMIT Melbourne in 1982 and a graduate diploma in painting at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1985. Since then he has held more than twenty solo exhibitions and participated in many group shows. Cars, suburbs, rock music and surfing are favourite themes of Campbell's; since the 1990s he has produced many artworks incorporating the word 'yeah'. His painting So you wanna be a rock'n'roll star (1990), now in the National Gallery of Victoria, was a key image of the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition of the same name in 2002. Campbell's portrait of singer Paul Kelly was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 2004.
