In 1997 when I was nineteen Robert Lenkiewicz started teaching me. At the time I lived in Dousland, ten miles from Plymouth and about a mile and a half away from Yelverton. I had no transport so my grandmother would drive me to the Barbican Studio and wait patiently for me outside. On one occaision when I had finished the lesson and got back into the car my gran said, "Does  your Mr Lenkiewicz have long grey hair and a beard".  "Yes".  I said , "He came out picking his nose!" she said.

During  our conversations Robert told me of a painting he did when he was about sixteen which was three hundred and sixty four feet long, which sadly along with other paintings was burnt by an evil woman whose daughter had a prediliction for Robert which was unrequited so the woman and her daughter burnt all his paintings. He remarked in a meloncholic way, "Some really good stuff was lost then". I bet there was.

He advised me not to be a painter if I wanted to make money because it is a lifestyle which doesn't pay well. I asked him about the prints of his paintings and he made it very clear that he hated them, "They're merely pale imitations of decent paintings" was one comment he made on them. I complained that I did not have enough space in my room to do large scale paintings, he told me that space is irrelevant and that he had done his three hundred and sixty four foot painting in a tiny room by unrolling lengths of a huge roll of canvas, painting on them then rolling them up and unwinding more of this huge canvas. He said there was lots of unused space in every room above head height and it was just a question of overcoming gravity with maybe a cargo net or hammocks. He advised me to get rid of anything I haven't used in a year which is something I still do. He told me the only things I needed to be a painter was a room, a cooker, a bed, a place to keep my paintings and a place to keep my books.

His son Wolfe used to do big copies of well known paintings on heavy canvas and sit with them taped down on the ground like a form of silent busking. He made so much money doing this that he even managed to pay someone to sit with the paintings all day and look after them. Robert told me his murals on the barbican are slowly peeling away because moisture seeps through brick work and strips the paint off from the inside out, so walls must be treated to make them water proof before any painting is done on them. Anyone who I have known who has been to prison, including Robert, has advised me to never do anything that would have me end up there. He said it was full of bullies and it was where he had his nose broken. He was sentenced to three months for taking books from Plymouth Musuem.

At this time I was attending Plymouth College Of  Further Education in the Goscen Centre. A mural painter called Heath was commissioned to paint a wall in the college. I mentioned Robert to him and he screwed his face up and snarled that Robert was just a self promoter, that he was not very good at painting and that he "couldn't get it up anymore". I stuck up for Robert saying he was a brilliant artist, a good man and and that he had a very bad heart condition. Heath was having none of it and carried on putting him down. Heath also painted a mural in 'Zavvi', previously Virgin Megastore in Plymouth, he is nothing compared to Robert and really should know better.

Robert told me an amusing story of when he used to be visited by a religious group (may be Jahovas witnesses but I can't be sure) who would try to ge him to join their group. This was in the late nineties and they believed the world would end at the end of 1999. They would always disturb him while he was painting or entertaining a lady friend. On one occaision they came in with an attractive young lady and saying the usual, "Oh Mr Lanevich you have to let us save your soul". " Ok then, I'll join your group" he said. "Oh Mr Lanevich that's wonderful". "But you believe the world will end in 1999 right?" "Yes Mr Lanevich absolutely". "Ok I'll join on the condition that I can meet her (pointing to the young lady) on January 2nd 2000 for sex". They were stunned and the young lady smiled and blushed, he said the never bothered him again.

One time I met him in the bedroom area of The Barbican Studio which had a beautiful old spanish bed in it. During our conversation a little light like a fairy started dancing around the room going from painting to painting and shining in my eyes. There was a little girl standing at the entrance with a mischievous grin and a little mirror which she was using to reflect the light and have it jump around the place. Robert said "Alright Little Mouse, I'll be with you in a moment". She scampered off somewhere. To me it was a very magical moment.

I had moved to Plymouth just before January 2000. In August 2001 I showed him my still life with a gas mask (a fairly decent picture of which can be seen on my blog www.dgambleart.blogspot.com and soon to be on a website). We were in the bedroom area again and he was very impressed with the painting, he looked at it from numerous angles and even put it on the old Spanish bed. Without thinking I leant on one of the bed nobs and there was a loud cracking sound, I stepped back quickly and Robert uttered a little sigh and shook his head a bit. He got back to the painting and praised it highly which was an honour for me. I also noticed he had a Wallace and Gromit alarm clock, the kind that says "Come on Gromit time for walkies!". He saw that I noticed it and gave me a little grin. I realised he knew a bit about psychology because I noticed he mirrored my body language as we spoke.

One day I was perusing the places down on the barbican and found a Gallery run by the Garland family. I spoke to Seth Garland for a while, he seemed nice until I mentioned Robret. His tone became pompous and smug, he said "Oh no, I don't rate Lenkiewicz at all". He took the flyer I had with Robert's Barbican fishermen on it and started an ill informed tirade of petty critisism, about how the faces were twisted and unnatural. I stuck up for Robert again and left the Gallery feeling genuinely dissappointed, before he started his verbal onslaught I thought I had found a kindred spirit, a new friend even, an art lover. He is another artist who really should know better. I think that some artists like Seth and Heath were jealous of Robert's ability and may be even his popularity with women and deep down they knew he was much better than them at painting.

In late 2001 I was going to move to Bristol. Before I left Robert asked me to be a disciple in his dipictions of The Last Supper and The Crucifixion. Robert took me to a flat on The Barbican which was just up the street from Castle Dyke Lane. He said, "Now remember, this place does not exist". "Ok". I said. We entered the flat and every available bit of space was taken up by paintings on easels, dozens of them with just a very thin path leading to the bedroom and to the kitchen. His broad 6'2 frame breezed through this tiny path without a second thought, I however was teetering along just inches away from the paintings aware that any clumsy nudge might send these paintings to the floor like very expensive dominoes. Robert glanced back at me he noticed my careful progress and chuckled. The path was really thin and I am hardly a svelte twinkle-toed chap myself at 6'6 and fifteen stone. There was a beautiful woman in the kitchen area making some tea. Robert had a diary in the bedroom and made an appointment for me. He didn't use people's names but assigned symbols for them, mine was a dice because my surname is Gamble.

I was never late for a single sitting. The Last Supper and The Crucifixion were in a huge building on Castle Dyke lane, it was an amazing place. It was huge and all the interior walls were white while the huge doors were black. There were lots of paintings and big blank canvasses waiting to be painted on. It had huge chamber-like rooms except where The Crucifixion was in which there was very little space in the room along side the painting.  In the last Supper I am the second figure on the right, a background figure with long hair (see pic 374 of Dr Phillip Stokes' book of photos of Robert's life). In the Crucifixion I am the first figure on the left looking down into a candle I am holding (see pic 376, Dr Phillip Stokes). The twenty pounds an hour wage was a bonus. During one of the sittings he said "I painted Billy Connolly today". "Did you really, he seems like a nice man". I said "Yes he's a very nice man" he said. I did not see the footage until a few years afterwards because I do not own a television. The footage can be seen in the last episode of Billy Connolly's World Tour Of England, Ireland And Wales. I came in for the last sitting and Robert told me the paintings of me were resolved that he was sorry I came in for nothing and offered me the twenty pounds. I refused saying I had not earnt it, he insisted that I took it but I refused again. Then smiling, he did something imperceptable to me and suddenly he had a huge roll of twenty pound notes in his hand, he peeled one off slowly and said "Take it". So I did.

The first sitting for The Last Supper was forty five minutes and in that time he had laid out the tones for my entire head with all the features established and an indication of where my shoulder was. The second sitting was about thirty five minutes and he seemed to make the image more accurate and it seemed to almost click together more, it seemed more like the other figures. The third, and to my recollection the final sitting took about the same time and the image seemed much more sharp than the initial tones of the first sitting although they did not change much throughout. He established the tonality of most of the areas with the first marks made. He still paid me the whole twenty pounds an hour wage for each sitting. I did not care about the money, to me it was an honour to be painted by him and to observe him in action. 

He told me that he had not worked to get his doctorate and that it was not something he had ever planned, I said I knew and it had just happened naturally, he agreed. I never told him that I thought that being a doctor of paint was very cool. I often wandered where he got his clothes, he seemed to always be wearing one of a few black velvet tops with a red scarf. These garments never seemed to fade to grey so he might have dyed them, I thought they looked great. He wore black comfy jogging trousers and black Cat boots, even in the summer it seemed.

He invited me along to The Beggars Banquet at Bretonside Bus Station on Christmas afternoon where every year Robert and some friends would provide vagrants and down and outs with a sumptuous christmas feast.  Before it he remarked that some of the vagrants had dogs as part of a sympathy act for the public and he considered the dogs to be tortured by them by lack of food and care. Sadly it turned out to be the last Christmas one but I was so impressed that they provided a veritable feast for those who where in need. This sort of thing should happen everywhere every Christmas.

In 2002 I was living in Bristol and working on a bunch of paintings. I phoned Yana to try to get an appointment with Robert so I could go back to Plymouth and show them to him. Yana said he was really very ill and I should wait for another time. I was sitting in a waiting room in the Bristol Royal Infirmary with my girlfriend at the time who had fallen and broken her coccyx and fractured her sacrum. My old friend Tristan Nichols, a respected journalist for The Western Morning News, phoned me and I took the call outside. He told me the sad news that Robert had died. There is a strange feeling that follows such news, a visceral physical sensation like being blasted in the chest by a shotgun, then a numbness sets in. The wounds heal over time but the scars remain.

Months later I was talking to a friend of mine known as Big Al'. I mentioned Robert and he had a story for me. Al's mother was very ill, bedridden in hospital. For some reason Robert was there and started to talk to her. Someone came up to interupt them and talk to Robert. Robert did not even look at him he just put his hand up to the guy's face as if to say WAIT!. Al's mum was forever touched by the fact that Robert had given her his complete attention that he was very sensitive to her condition and showed a genuine sympathy for her.

Bristol is well known for it's music scene and the biggest band to come out of it are Massive Attack. I kept seeing on of the front men, Grant (Daddy G) Marshall around my area of Gloucester Road. One day I saw him going into the supermarket around the corner from my house and I decided to give him a copy of Keith Nichols' book on Robert which has lovely pictures but I can find fault with some of the information. When I gave Grant the book he was a little bit stunned and told me he had seen an exhibition of Robert's about ten years previously in a cave, he thought it might have been penzance, but he could not remember Robert's name. Grant likes Robert's paintings and I ended up giving him the excellent book of photos by Dr Phillip Stokes, the brilliant Paintings And Projects book, which I consider to be the best most informative account of Robert's work and life, and I gave him the Robert A. Fenner and co. auction catalogue of 2004. These books were well recieved by Grant and he still has them in his book shelf.

I also saw the actor Paul McGann around and had the same feeling that I should talk to him about Robert. I saw him early one morning and gave him a copy of Keith Nicholls' book. We sat in a cafe and he told me he knows Robert's daughter Rebecca, a successful playwright in London. Paul told me of his interest in Russian poets and how once Robert sent him a selection of poetry. I was completely skint at the time and Paul was having cake and tea, to this day I regret not being able to afford to have had cake and tea with 'Marwood', vis-a-vis the Penrith  tea shop scene in Withnail and I.

I started a couple of life drawing classes, one in Queen's Road Art School. I offered a copy of the Paintings And Projects book to my tutor who looked through it but did not accept the gift because she was not very interested by the paintings, although she did think he was very talented. I was quite surprised at this but ended up giving that copy to the comedian Russell Brand who was interested in the work but it was the first he had heard of Robert.

After looking at hundreds of Robert's paintings, sometimes in different stages of completion, I know he is one of the most important artists of modern times and he is my favourite artist. I didn't think much of it when he was alive but I sometimes can not believe I knew him and that for so long he was just a stone's throw away from where I lived. I enjoyed just going down to the Barbican studio and looking around at the dozens of paintings that were there, whether Robert was there or not it was incredible to just be amoungst his work. He could paint anything he looked at and was equally good at illustrations, although his obvious favorite subject was painting people which he excelled at.    

In my opinion Robert was a modern day Rembrandt, he was always keen to see other people's art. He would always try to help someone if they had a problem and gave excellent advice, he touched the lives of so many people and tried to make their lives a little better if he could. He is a great artist and should be recognised as such, he is truly the people's painter.