Charles Avery studied with me at the now razed 369 Gallery in Edinbugh. He was 18. I met him because he had drawn a portrait of a girl I was bedding, who was renting a bedsit in the attic of his father's house. The girl was German, a fashion student, spoke very little English and was breathtakingly beautiful. I was invited to teach by the town's godfather of art Andrew Brown - a Warholesque character who attracted the most eccentric and excellent people from around the globe to his 3-storey palace of iniquity and who held legendary parties brimming with champagne and caviar smuggled from St Petersburg. Anyway, Charlie came to me to learn how to paint and I taught him all I knew, which he grasped in weeks and with nauseating ease, then I told him to go away and just draw as his talent was remarkable and he would grow simply by persistence. In truth he was better than anyone out there who may have resorted to teaching; he wanted to go to art school and I advised him not to (for that very reason). I think he went to Goldsmiths or St Martins anyway (for a while). He was a prodigy. A natural genius. And I am deeply happy to see he has improved and not devolved to producing self-indulgent crud.
