BY the turn of the Millennium, Jack Coulthard was feeling disillusioned by the high-falutin’ “art game”, and sought creativity of a different kind.

Born of frustration was his paintwork, ‘Makers’. In it, a group of gardeners, who, deep in the task of cultivating their world, began decorating, stencilling, bejewelling and modelling the space.

No fine artists, but simply makers, “because that’s what we are”, says Jack.

Rejecting pretention for the joy of pure imagination is arguably the essence of Coulthard’s work.

Now 83, his staggering, visually-rich phantasmagoria, ‘Bigger Pictures’, is on show at Taunton’s Creative Innovation Centre; a must-see exhibition running until January 2.

The Yorkshireman, who has lived in Kingston St Mary for over 50 years, has spent his artistic life recreating not what life looks like but how it feels.

Philosophy, sex, conflict, myth, class tension, Britishness, the grey between id and ego, the Salvation Army … whatever his subject, Jack has endeavoured to “look into the mouth of time, not backwards after it”.

On Saturday, the groundbreaker gave a talk before an assembled audience of former students from his SCAT lecturing days, to present “the heresies” underpinning his worldview and work.

The man who refused to join art’s ‘clubhouses’, argued: “should try and make the object of your painting as different as possible … a lot of art is about making art seem unified and the same. But there’s no joy in that.”

And another thing – “Pablo Picasso and Jimi Hendrix saved us all.”

Bigger Pictures opens 9.30am to 12.30pm, Monday to Friday, and 9.30am to 5pm on Saturdays.