About Byron

I was born on the 23rd of October 1948 in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Lewis Addison Wells and Leetta May Wells. We lived near Elk River, but I spent most of my youth in Dayton, Minnesota until I was about 12 years of age. These years spent growing up in Dayton had a lot of influence on my artwork, but the biggest influence was my Grandmother, Florence Wells. I was so taken by her artistry, that by the age of 6 or 7 years old, I’d started working with watercolors, learning to control the paints.

Later when we moved to Bloomington I began high school and started selling my work for the first time. I had some good teachers that pushed me to be more creative. Upon graduating from high school, I joined the U.S. Navy. I had my paints with me, but I did not have much time for painting while serving in the Vietnam War. After I completed four years of service, I took a job as a machinist, but wanted to do more with my art skills.

I married my wife, Linda in 1974 and we had our first child, Taylor in 1975. I started doing more arts and crafts shows around the Twin Cities and found them to be very successful. Later, I was laid off of work and the jobs simply weren’t there. Faced with this, I turned to my artwork and found much support from Linda. Together, we were able to provide for our family selling my watercolors. Several years later, we had our daughter, Emily, and I was called back to my old job, but we still enjoyed doing art shows on the weekends.

In 1990, we lost Linda to cancer and my life has never been the same without her. Before passing, she had asked me to promise to never quit painting. It was very hard on me to do shows and work a night shift at my full-time job, so within a year I stopped showing my work, but still painted and put my work in galleries. Years later, I met and married Candy Shelso, who pushed me to get back into the art shows.