I remember vividly when I first started properly to discern the paintings on the walls in Windsor Castle. As a child they had merely been part of the general background, but as a teenager they suddenly sprang into focus and became objects of fascination. In later life my first visit to Venice was made twice as exciting having been lucky enough to grow up with the occasional Canaletto.

The Royal Collection has always meant so much more to me precisely because it represents the results of ancestral discerning eyes which have picked out particular artists from amongst their contemporaries and who have then been commissioned to paint the horses, dogs, houses, children, wives, husbands and friends of individual sovereigns.

Being invited to take part in the selection of works to go into the Discerning Eye exhibition is a great treat and it has been a real joy to discover the often unknown talent that exists in this country.

For instance, Ross Loveday's paintings I found enormously appealing and, by a self-taught artist, a triumph. Kate Montgomery's hauntingly medieval-like paintings also inspired me - and I feel especially proud of her because she studied for a while at my Institute of Architecture.

Struggling as I do with watercolours, it was wonderful to find that a relatively unknown artist like Norman Sayle had won the first prize in the recent Sunday Times/Singer and Friedlander competition with his rather arresting watercolours. Kevin Hughes' mysteriously romantic west country watercolours helped reinforce the fascination I have with the way in which the human imagination is so infinitely varied in terms of artistic expression. For example, I often wonder whether we all see the world through an astonishing range of different colour perceptions...? Whatever the case, even in an age of sophisticated photography and computerized reproduction, it is the intensely natural combination of the human hand and eye which still produces the irresistible, idiosyncratic textures of paint that strike a particular chord in the deeper parts of our being.

 

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