‘Renaissance Man’ epitomises so much of what it is not only to be an artist, but to live alongside one. The subject of the painting, my partner Simon, is a concert pianist who, like me, seems drawn to a time long past, when the artistic movements we now idealise in books were in their gestation. As such, I have configured this portrait as a study in opposites – both richness and precariousness, young and old, alive and deathly.