“A process full of ambiguity and chance.”

My dad, Hugh, is an artist, and I’m up in Aberdeen to see an exhibition of his work at the Castlegate Gallery. The location is an unprepossessing former bakery near brutalist modern tower blocks and large rubbish bins, tucked away behind the intersection of two of the city’s largest roads: Union Street and King Street.

It’s lovely inside though. White and bright and inviting. And the proprietor, Graham Fowler, is a true artist’s artist who cares deeply about the work and hardly at all about sales or commissions; it seems he makes ends meet by framing, and by providing this venue, he gives artists like my dad a lease of life.

There were twenty-three items for sale, and only two have been sold. I love them all, but I notice I’m taken by bright colours expressing juxtapositions of inner and outer realities.

I won’t share my dad’s life story here, but Schizophrenia has been a big part of it. He has survived and continued to paint and draw. His flat, where I am now, is more or less a studio, and you can hardly move for all the paintings, art books, and painting materials, but he’s made it home.

I am proud of him, because I know what he has had to endure, and still endures. And I was glad to be there today.