He painted this self-portrait in the summer of 1961, in his makeshift studio, a spare bedroom in his parents' house in Northamptonshire. He told me he used a mixture of oil paints and cheap domestic decorating paint, mixing in sand to give it a textured finish, after the style of the Cubists. It was later included in an exhibition called 'Three Young Artists', in Northampton in 1964. These days it hangs on the wall in my mum and dad's house, literally part of the wallpaper as I was growing up, and it was only when he sent me a photograph, with the title 'portrait of the artist as an old man' that I was reminded of its existence. When we were younger, my sister and I were always amused by its audacity - the brooding looks, the come hither pose - it was hard to connect the young man of the painting with our ole dad. And while I still enjoy its ripe sense of confidence, nowadays I've a greater appreciation for the fact that it exists at all - that a boy's vocation became his life. Here's what that boy looks like today, at work in his studio in Devon...
Thank you, Dad, for bringing my Swiss Sketchbook to life in such marvellous fashion. Readers, I hope you've enjoyed this pictorial tour of some of the settings in A Heart Bent Out of Shape as much as I have.