John Bellany

This one's from a few years ago - you can read the article if you click the link on the the right hand side of the page.

John Bellany is one of Scotland's best known artists, who uses language almost as vividly as he does paint. He beautifully evokes his Calvinist childhood and remembers days in Milne's Bar, Edinburgh with the nationalist poet, Hugh MacDiarmid, whose "words wafted out of the window like cigarette smoke".

Bellany's Edinburgh flat is magnificent, full of huge canvases from his earliest days. He was an hypnotic talker and even his wife Helen, gentle, soft spoken and very elegant, sat listening for much of the time, as if she'd never heard it before. As I was leaving Bellany gave me a hug and said " I've found a soul-mate". And that was without having a drink.