Last year, my son Colin approached me to see if I might be willing to create a mural for his new wine bar in Glasgow called The Caravan Shop. This was previously a shop which sold accessories for caravans, and the team became so accustomed to calling it The Caravan Shop that the name stuck. The proposed location for the mural was the narrow staircase from the main bar on the ground floor to the cellar below. I’m not accustomed to working on a large scale but I decided to see what I could do. I began by making drawings of everything I could see around me – the lights, the crockery, the glasses, the tables and the wine bottles. The predominant shape was the oval, and the dominant colour was blue. 

 

The wall was a handy 2 metres high by 2.4 metres across, but the tight space and the need for the staff to go up and down the stairs made working in situ impossible. I hit on the idea of making 4 panels and of working on them in my studio here in Hove. 

 

This meant I could work in my favoured medium – cutting out and sticking my painted papers – and I could take as long as I needed. In fact it took about 2 months. Because there is a lot of human traffic in the space, and the risk of spillages of champagne (!) I wanted to ensure my precious mural wouldn’t deteriorate. I found a washable varnish that promised to protect acrylic paper and, 5 glossy coats later, I sent the panels to Glasgow. Colin installed them just before Christmas 2025.