If I’m honest, of everything I saw today by this amazing artist, this was the least impressive BUT the truly stunning work had “no photography” labels and so the only things we were allowed to photograph were these symmetrical images. For some reason, this particular photograph looked best and to be honest, even this one has loads of noise because it was shot in very low light.

The thing that’s not possible to see and what makes it very cleverly done is that the image is made up of six sheets of hand-made paper, three across the bottom and three across the top. The symmetry appears to have been obtained by folding the two centre ones while the paint is wet, then doing mirror images of the outer ones by pressing the sheets together.

We were visiting the exhibition as part of our art tuition and asked to say what primary school children could get out of seeing these images. I immediately saw the point that they will have been making butterflies and other symmetrical images in art from reception classes upwards and this could be a symbol of the validity of their efforts – you know, a proper artist uses this technique. I also saw it as a wonderful project for a year 6 class – first make the paper then make the image on the home made paper. You see, I have a scheme of work in place for my art teaching already!

The sad thing was that today I saw some of his work that I’d happily claim to be the most beautiful sculptures I have ever seen by any artist and they don’t appear on this page because someone obviously decided that it would harm the artist’s reputation by allowing them to be photographed. Five enormous stones, made from Rosso Luana, carved into beautiful, glittering, colourful pieces that were so tactile they had an erotic quality that you could not imagine of huge pieces of stone. I said that at the time, causing one of my young Uni friends to giggle madly but that didn’t stop the entire cohort from fondling the pieces for longer than a simple “oh yes, that’s nice, it’s very smooth”. These fondles were “oooooohhhhhhh this is truly something”!

I’ve fondled Peter Randall-Page’s art before – the seed at the Eden Project is one of his works and I must say, these are infinitely more satisfying. If you don’t believe me go and see them yourself – they’re at the Peninsula Art Gallery in Roland Levinsky building at Plymouth University from now until the 29th March – you won’t regret it. (John A – I particularly think you would love them!)