He starts to laugh. ‘I see what you mean, but it wasn’t intentional. My blue mood first, then a green day as you go along the row… but, no, it’s just the way I work. Sometimes it’s the sky that catches my attention and I want to experiment to find that perfect shade. Other days it’s the forest beyond the orchard that calls me. Or the walled garden and the profusion of pinks, reds and purples.’

‘Your father struggled, you say?’

He nods. ‘So many unfinished works. He battled with drug addiction for the last few years of his life as well. With great talent comes great passion and he was a man obsessed with detail. The truth is that he had a different reason for hating every single one of his paintings. I remember as a young boy taking his lunch into him in the studio and he was stabbing at a canvas with a knife. He was mutilating it because he couldn’t capture the light and shade to his satisfaction. Weeks of work destroyed in minutes.

‘What I saw in his eyes scared me. The pills he began taking seemed to take the edge off the pain, but it was a downhill slope. One day he swallowed a whole bottle and that was it.’

He isn’t looking for sympathy and I say nothing. What can you say to something like that?

Nico has led me over to a stack of canvases leaning against the wall in the corner of the room and pulls off the cover protecting them. He lifts the first canvas and turns it, placing it on one of the tracks. It’s about four feet square and it’s a young woman sitting on a chair, looking out of a window. But it’s so unlike the painting in my room; this one is intricate and precise.

‘Can you see the flaws?’ Nico watches as my eyes travel over it.

‘Well, it’s beautiful and the face is so true to life that the eyes seem to follow me as I move a little closer to the painting. I feel I could reach out and actually touch her skin, but there’s something not quite right. I can’t tell you what, exactly.’

He stands back, gazing at it. ‘The neck is a little too long and the angle of the window distorts the perspective ever so slightly but enough for the eye to register and that detracts from the overall aesthetics.’

‘But it’s still a very beautiful work of art, Nico.’