(A version of this essay was published online by the Society of Scottish Artists in 2024)    Almost 50 years ago I made the piece titled...

The melancholic temperament has an enduring association with creative people. Although not an essential part of the creative process it...

Over 20 years ago the psychiatrist, Howard Cutler, published "the Art of Happiness”, based on conversations with the Dalai Lama. Their...

Anyone who suggests that you should ‘get real’ is showing their age. What was ‘cool’ in the late 20th century now has a definite ‘retro’...

Fifty years ago, under the influence of British pop art and the American ‘hard edge’, I felt that painting still had the power to change...

I have run almost every day for the past sixty years. I say almost for my career has been peppered with injuries, mostly from overuse. I...

Some years ago the Spectator art critic, Andrew Lambirth, writing about David Hockney's Royal Academy show, noted that: “a great many...

We were walking back to the gallery when Elvis headed off to take a pee on the edge of Richard Long’s Macduff circle. It seemed perfectly...

A favourite theme of Alan Watts was how 'civilization' had led us to confuse symbol with reality. Our fascination with naming, describing...

My father was a furnace man and I spent my last two years at school working every holiday alongside him at the iron foundry – Easter,...