I'd rode through it on a pushbike twice when at art school in Kingston, but missed St Ives. Then in 1965 I went to St Ives for the first time. I came down to Newlyn with John Mitchell and Roger Bristow. John was in Fine Art at Kingston, I was in Graphics, and Roger was a year behind me in Graphics...that was Easter 1965. Roger has more recently written books about Terry Frost and the two Roberts, Colquhoun and MacBryde, by the way.

In about 1968, I bought an Adana press and started printing business cards and things like that. Then I bought a Heidelberg press from Headland Printers in Penzance. I had it brought to St Erth strapped to a breakdown jib. I brought it across a field and through a hedge, and put it on a platform at the bottom of my garden where I erected a double garage. And that was where my print business was. I was also doing silk screen on a table there.

I hand-set all the type for Des' book. Towards the end of hand-setting the type, my wife had had Zara and had gone back to London with the baby, which got in the way of the printing. I was in such a state I hitchhiked to London to try and sort it out, which rather disrupted the work.

Then in the early 70's you went touring with Jim Hughes, as Mask (pictured above).

I mentioned that I'd gone up to London to sort my marriage out. Well, when I got back, that same night I went to Julie Hewitt's folk club, 'Mask' in St Ives. Jim Hughes, who was a guitarist and songwriter, was there and he came back to the house whilst Zara and Jenny were away.  He had the idea we could write something. He encouraged me to develop a performance piece with him, called 'Arnold', and it turned out to be one of the best things I've ever done. 

Then Dennis Stephens, who is a lutenist now, brought me a box of watercolours. I'd been giving him space and encouragement at the folk club. I sat on the front and began to paint in watercolour, and discovered the complexities of water colour. Every colour, when liberated from water, has its own property.

And you first started exhibiting these works in the craft market?

The Sloop Craft Market opened in 1969. It became very active. Jenny had been working there from 1969. She worked on different stalls eg with Reg Simpson, the silver worker, and someone who was making wooden furniture. One of her jobs was to sand off the label on wooden spoons that said 'Made in the Philippines'! And she worked on another stall where they made sandals with wooden soles.

In 1973, in the spring I had an exhibition of the seascapes in the library and I sold all of them. That made me think I could find a stall in the market and I could live from that instead of being a deck chair man. I met another painter called Peter Knox who was keen to move to the craft market and we chased down a man who had abandoned his stall, and it was agreed we would pay him rent out of what we'd earned. And we agreed an amount we would pay him every week. 

What other outlets were there in St Ives at the time? The Penwith was nearly all abstract art was n't it?

It was n't all abstract. 
 

So did you join the Penwith Society? 

I then put some of my big beach hut paintings into the Penwith and sold them, because people had seen them in my gallery first. That was 1980. It was a big sale.

Lovely. Talking of your own gallery, what was the Salthouse before you took it on?

The top room had been selling prints and drawings by Hyman Segal and bits of antiques and so on. Segal had had a studio underneath what is now the St Ives Art school, and he had an antique shop with his wife in Fore Street next to the New Craftsman, but he also had some of his drawings and other bits in the top room. He was renting it. Keith English was using the small room downstairs. (Photo below left shows old Salthouse Gallery entrance c1981)
 

What other galleries were around in the 1980s?

When I moved down I was finding my way as a painter, and printmaker and poet, and so that wish went to the side for a bit, but it was still there. Jenny had started etching and the stall was becoming cramped so eventually, in the late 70s, I started looking for a gallery where I could represent other artists; younger artists that had been overlooked, and non-established artists from within the colony and outside, and where I could show my own work.

When I was doing the deck chairs I used to work as a waiter in the Harbour restaurant and work until after midnight. I arrived at the deck chairs at half seven in the morning, except on nights when I compèred events at the Guildhall. It was like I was two or three people! The person who I worked for in the Harbour restaurant happened to own the Salthouse Gallery building and Norway Square outside. I approached him to rent it, and he let me in, with no problems at all. 

Three years after I'd moved in, he wanted to sell the large, big room downstairs, or get someone to rent it. So he let me organise builders to cut through the wall from the old Salthouse. It had been a garage. It was full of all sorts of crap. He paid for the conversion and for cutting through. I paid for the lighting in that big room. That was 1983.

For many years I was the biggest gallery west of Bristol giving one-man shows to contemporary artists. So people from Wales and Bristol as well as St Ives, Penzance and Falmouth were coming to me.

What appealed to them even more is that I paid for the publicity. A lot of galleries charge the artists to produce the invites and catalogues. I got the artist to supply postcards. Postcard sales helped finance invitations.

Yes, I think so. The visitors were still coming. The New Craftsman started to put paintings on the walls in about 1978, and Gilly took over Wills Lane at that time. These things both propelled me to open the gallery because I thought there's going to be more and more competition if I leave it too long.

The Wills Lane and Penwith were the most serious contemporary galleries. There was the St Ives Society but it was very backwards-looking. And then there was a gallery run by Keith English that was upstairs over the Union pub. People like Donald McLeod was in there. Then it moved into Fore Street, down near the book shop. Then he moved to where Donald McLeod is now.

One of my best supporters was a chap called Kim Taylor who started the Ark press in Somerset, but he moved it to Zennor. Ark press was a press that published D H Lawrence. He published all sorts of people, and was able to use Guido Morris' old presses.

You yourself were painting more abstract works...