In his 1967 book The Company I Have Kept, the poet and author Hugh McDairmid called his friend William Johnstone (1897-1981) ‘the bad boy of Scottish art’ and ‘not only the most important but the only important living Scottish artist’.

“Should I call it presence in absence, or absence in presence, or both? It’s something of that order.”

Was there a more enigmatic 21st-century British artist than Simon Lewty, whose work was evolving in mysterious ways right until his death, aged 80, in January?

It would be easy to walk past an Anita Klein work, without paying it the scrutiny it deserves.

On the face of it, her subject matter is quotidian, familial, twee even. A dark-haired, early-middle-aged female figure is usually involved in some sort of activity with her friends or family: planting seedlings; playing snakes and ladders; swimming in the rain, stirring sugar into an espresso.

British Art Fair announces a partnership with WaterAid which will see a collection of site-specific climate-themed works go under the hammer at this year’s fair to raise awareness of the devastating impact of climate change on vulnerable communities’ access to clean water.

Established artists, emerging artists and celebrities who are not generally considered as artists have been asked to produce work to go ‘under the hammer’ at a charity auction on Thursday 29.

Emily Young has created four sculptures especially for British Art Fair, to be shown by Willoughby Gerrish. The largest of these, Earth Dreamer I, will be erected outside Saatchi Gallery in Duke of York Square, for the duration of the weekend and until October 26.

‘The magic of painting’, states the London-based Dutch artist Marcelle Hanselaar, in a recent interview with FAD Magazine, ‘is that you can show the inner and the outer, the suggestive or the interpretative, on the same plane’.

The Cave of the Golden Calf, London’s first-ever night club, was opened in July 1912 by writer and socialite Frida Strindberg, as a space for artists and other bohemian types looking for a spot which, as the New York Times put it, was ‘brazenly expressive of the libertarian pleasure principle’. It was in a low-ceilinged basement in Heddon Street in Soho (formerly a draper’s studio) and great attention was paid to its interior design, with primitivist wall paintings by Wyndham Lewis, Spencer Gore and Charles Ginner.

John Piper (1903-1992) was a remarkable polymath, a writer and editor as well as a prolific artist, who worked across numerous genres and styles, from abstract painting to opera set design to stained-glass windows. But he will, perhaps, be best remembered as a draughtsman and painter of gloweringly picturesque landscapes, with a penchant for historic English buildings. And particularly buildings which had deteriorated into what he described as ‘an exquisite state of decay’.

Michael Bird’s latest book – this is tomorrow - follows familiar terrain, taking the reader on an entertaining ride through the history of the British Modernist art movement, from its roots in the 1870s, to the turn of the millennium.

Portal Painters have been building up their stable of artists for over 60 years, and they have a distinct MO, when it comes to choosing who to represent. The gallery use the term ‘idiosyncratic’: their painters’ styles are instantly recognisable, once you have seen a piece of their work.

On the face of it, the Glyn Philpot show at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, Flesh and Spirit, tells the story of Philpot ‘going Picasso’ (as The Scotsman saw it), shapeshifting from a fashionable, traditional and hugely successful society portrait painter, into an experimental Modernist

“The coast is a drama,” says landscapist Alan Cotton, “where the sea is constantly attacking the land: trying to destroy it. That dynamic… is like a life force.” Brought up in a working-class home in Redditch, the acclaimed landscape painter didn’t even see the sea until he was 14.

“White is the whole reason for me painting”.So says John Blackburn, who is celebrating his ninetieth birthday with his seventh exhibition at Mayfair gallery Osborne Samuel (September 8 – 23).

Mark Johnston was brought up in the north-east of England, and has lived most of his adult life in Sussex. He has spent long periods of time sketching in other parts of the country (Cumbria, for example; the Munros in Scotland) and Europe (he has lived in Greece, Andalucia and Barcelona).

How long have you been involved in the art market?I started working for the Fine Art Society as a student in Edinburgh in 2005. I then went on to work at the Fine Art Society in London, and latterly with Robert Bowman.

In 1951, on the eve of his first art exhibition, in London, the 19-year-old painter David Tindle thumbed through the phone book, to help sprinkle some stardust onto the occasion. He discovered that one of his heroes – John Minton – was listed, and gave him a cold call.

How long have you been involved in the art market?I started working for the Fine Art Society as a student in Edinburgh in 2005. I then went on to work at the Fine Art Society in London, and latterly with Robert Bowman.

Mark Johnston was brought up in the north-east of England, and has lived most of his adult life in Sussex. He has spent long periods of time sketching in other parts of the country (Cumbria, for example; the Munros in Scotland) and Europe (he has lived in Greece, Andalucia and Barcelona).

“White is the whole reason for me painting”.So says John Blackburn, who is celebrating his ninetieth birthday with his seventh exhibition at Mayfair gallery Osborne Samuel (September 8 – 23).