He was born and grew up in Lisburn, a Catholic in a working class Protestant area. He moved to the Lower Ormeau area of Belfast as a young man and became involved in the alternative music and arts scene. He began contributing to the small press anthology Ximoc in the early 1980s after writing a fan letter, drawing strips like "Chunky and the Green Monkey". His strips, in contrast to the fantasy, science fiction and humour that made up most of the magazine, were strongly political, although they did not address Northern Ireland politics. Lavery was related to the painter Sir John Lavery.