Most likely because I was absolutely crap at it, I had no understanding of art at school. I was dreadful. While it was a compulsory subject for the first two years at secondary, pupils were given the option on whether to carry on studying to ‘O’ Level & then even ‘Higher’ qualification standard.

Not me. I was told to drop it. Not quite fourteen years of age, and the art world had already written me off. It was a harsh world back then.

As it happens, this was a sound decision. There was no point chasing a lost cause. Even today, I have difficulty in drawing my pension.

It’s really only as I’ve aged and matured (more like a cheese than a classic painting, it has to be said) that I’ve grown to appreciate art in all its forms, especially so, painting. I now find myself not only watching but enjoying television programmes like ‘Landscape Artist of the Year.’ Or indeed the portrait equivalent.

I think maybe my own deficiencies in the art department have at long last led me to appreciate just how talented others must be to produce such beauty from nothing other than a blank canvas.

I’m still pretty ignorant when it comes to naming artists let alone their styles and techniques. I just like what I like.

My favourite artist? Well it’s got to be my wife, Diane. She’s always been pretty handy with a paintbrush, ever since we met forty-five years ago. But it was really only after retiring that she’s taken her talent seriously. Now, with the guidance of a tutor, she’s developing her own style and experimenting with a more varied subject matter.

Her studio is filled with paintings that illustrate the progress she’s made over these past couple of years, and hopefully some day soon she’ll have the confidence to arrange some local pop-up galleries and see it’s not only me who enjoys her work.