Born into a fishing family at Port Seton, East Lothian, Bellany trained at the Edinburgh College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. During the late 1960s and '70s he developed a highly personal mythological-figurative style at a time when abstract art was becoming the norm. His large scale works often incorporate hybrid human and animal forms, and were influenced by his travels and experiences through the Low Countries and Germany during these years. In the 1980s he completed a large number of watercolour portraits, by which time Bellany was recognised as an artist of international stature. His work during this period was displayed a tortured quality that reflects recurrent bouts of illness and the exorcising on various personal demons. Recently his work has become more optimistic and increasingly mellow.

Bellany is arguably Scotland's greatest living figurative painter and in the course of his long and distinguished career he has produced an extraordinary body of work. His work can be seen in many prestigious museums and art galleries including the National Galleries of Scotland, Tate Britain, the Museum of Modern Art New York and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.