“The portrait is of my oldest friend – we met on the first day at Infant school and consoled each other as our mothers left us. Later we shared a school desk and were considered ‘arty’ by our teacher. We grew up in the first garden city of Letchworth which in the 50s and early 60s was still very much a centre of the Arts and Crafts. Otto’s family were all very creative; painters, musicians, jewellers and it was at Otto’s house that I first heard Bob Dylan. The family had a huge impact on me and led to my own passion for the arts and making. We both went to art school, Otto to Bristol and me to Reading, and we became disciples of William Morris.

Last year Otto telephoned me to say he had terminal cancer. I visited him in his house in Bristol and we spent a happy and positive day discussing his plans for his funeral. I made some sketches of him and also took photographs to base a portrait on. I painted two portraits – one of him at his kitchen table and the other by the piano – he liked both of them and decided to use the portrait in the kitchen for the cover of the order of service, which I gave him, and I kept one myself. The funeral was amazing full of music and poetry in a beautiful de-consecrated church with hundreds of friends. Otto’s husband has hung the portrait of Otto at the kitchen col on the staircase in his beautiful house which remains perhaps Otto’s greatest work of art. I wanted to exhibit my portrait of Otto by the piano in the RGA summer show in memory of my friend and so I was very moved to be told that the picture had been voted the Peoples’ Choice.”