Joe Hynes was born in the Cathedral City of Armagh, County Armagh, Northern Ireland.  He is essentially a self-taught artist who, from an early age, showed a talent for sketching and painting. He gained inspiration for his style of painting by studying the work of a number of English artists such as Edward Wesson and Ashley Jackson. In 1977 he gave up working in the field of Graphic Art to dedicate himself to full-time painting, beginning mainly with the depiction of the flora and fauna of his native land. Today his paintings feature in private collections around the World, in various corporate collections, and many have also been published worldwide in the form of greetings cards and calendars.