When Boris Johnson won the election on the back of the so called Red Wall seats , I sent him a picture of what it looked like to focus his mind on levelling up. To his credit it now hangs in Downing Street, as Art critic David Whetstone reported for Cultured North East.

‘Regeneration is both the exhibition’s title and its theme. It’s a bounce back after the darkest days of the pandemic and a nod to what the North is and might become if the Government delivers on its ‘levelling up’ promises.

The artist tells me that after Boris Johnson won the election by breaching the ‘red wall’, a thought entered his head: “What he needs is a picture of Burnley on his wall.

“I sent half a dozen pictures down to him as pdfs, explaining why I thought he should have one of them. I wanted a picture of the North to be right in front of him.”

Burnley (oil on canvas) was duly selected for the Government Art Collection (GAC) and it hangs at Downing Street, there to be admired by the Prime Minister and his Cabinet.

On the GAC website it is described thus: “landscape 21stC, industrial, urban, bin, street, terraced house, chimney”.

If that isn’t the perfect counterpoint to a Lulu Lytle interior, then I don’t know what is.

But if that blunt inventory sounds bleak, the Kinnear painting style is anything but. With deft brushstrokes and exuberant swathes of colour, he elevates grittiness to something rich and magisterial.’