One of his paintings shows a young woman running towards the outstretched arms of a bear. Are his animals, I wonder, symbolic? “Not symbolic,” he says, and then, maybe, rethinks. “Most of the human figures I paint are female, and I guess they represent my two daughters, and I’m expressing my concern about them going out into the real world.”

There’s a quote on the private view invitation I’ve received, by a Professor Michael Tucker, that ‘there is a good deal of the shamanic about Gary Goodman’. Does he like the quote? “I didn’t choose for it to be put there,” he says. “But I like the idea of me being a wounded healer. I have to keep one eye open every night because of the health of my daughter. This stress comes out in my painting. I don’t mean it to be therapeutic or anything, but if someone makes a connection with that, and it helps them, that’s positive.”

I ask him about his association with Billy Childish, with whom he’s sharing the exhibition space. Does he feel their art has much in common? “We’ve known each other for five years,” he says. “And we’ve talked about art quite a lot. This is actually our first show together, but we do share a lot of principles. We both have a sense of honest getting down to it. It’s a punk thing: we’re three-chord wonders. A lot of contemporary art is very bloodless. We don’t mind having blood spilt in our paintings. We’re not cool and distant. We like to stare you in the face a bit.” AL