It was on a rainy day in 2007 that Billy first put pen to paper. Taking refuge from the grey drizzle of Montreal, Canada, he entered an art shop with a twinkling curiosity and left with an armful of supplies and the urge to create. Back in his hotel room, his felt-tip pens and sketchbook formed a portal for his imagination, and over the next five years his drawings evolved into his debut fine art collection, Born On A Rainy Day, which launched in 2012.

Billy's highly-collectible series of limited edition prints and stainless steel sculptures is as humorous as his own comedy, with elements of his own life unexpectedly appearing throughout. Billy Connolly is unarguably one of the world's finest stand-up comics. He has also been an acclaimed actor and musician; now he has turned his rich talents into visual art, with many hugely popular collections of limited edition prints and steel sculptures for Castle Fine Art.

'I'd never drawn in my life until this point, but I just started drawing weird islands and carried on drawing.'

Billy creates his art at his Florida home, where he draws a plethora of wondrous images, from extinct Scottish cats and horses with two legs, to Teddy Boys and flying babies. Whatever takes his imagination, he gets down on paper for his avid collectors.

In 2023, a coffee-table book of Billy's art was published by Castle, featuring over 300 published and unpublished works, and he was thrilled with the result. 'I didn't know there were so many pieces. I thought I must have 12 or 20. I don't know how many, but there are over 300 in the book. 300! That's ridiculous. It's lovely.' 'Some of them are quite virginal and purist and they go for the good side of life. And others are quite dodgy and a bit bad taste, which pleases me greatly. They're of a world of their own. There's no similarity whatsoever in writing a book and drawing; drawing oozes from you. It takes hold of part of what's in your head and makes you do it on paper'.

Billy began his working life as a welder in the Glasgow shipyards, and he has celebrated that job with drawing entitled 'And on Monday, God Made the World', of which he is very proud. As well as being available as a silkscreen print, it later became a stainless-steel sculpture almost two metres high on a black granite base.

'It means a lot to me because he's a welder, and I'm a welder,' says Billy, referring to his pre-fame career. 'I keep thinking what welders will think when they see it. Welders on the Clyde will love it because it's an angel, as they already think they're pretty much godlike!'.

Billy's work began in black and white, but over the years, he has added colour to his work, which has taken it into a whole new dimension. 'The people at Castle Fine Art asked me if I wanted to try colour on some of the pieces, and I did, and they just came to life. It was a breathtaking move; I was flabbergasted, and now they're so popular that I find myself signing hundreds of prints.'

These colourful new pieces included 'Windswept and Interesting', showing a flamboyant Teddy Boy shaking his maracas, which was based on Billy's teenage experiences in the Glasgow dance halls. 'I used to wear those loud socks like him for many years. I had an Italian three-button suit and I can just see myself in the bathroom at the Locarno Ballroom in Glasgow fighting for the mirror, with the smell of Old Spice wafting through the place. You'd have a skinny tie with a big tie pin to hold it down, and cufflinks that looked like eagles landing on a ruby'.

Even though Billy no longer performs as a stand-up comedian, he still loves connecting with the collectors who buy his art. 'I have a lot of time for the fans because I owe them everything. And, particularly in Scotland, people speak to me and five sentences in they go: 'Oh my God, it's Billy Connolly! I thought you were my cousin!'. And that's a lovely thing - not many people get that in their lives. When you get beyond the autograph stage, you become like a relative'.