Jo McLaughlin in conversation with Mike Kelly for Jo’s Art History Podcast

Jo: Hello and welcome back to Jo’s Art History Podcast, a podcast dedicated to celebrating all things art-historical, with me, your host and resident art historian, Jo McLaughlin.

Welcome back to a very special series of episodes. You are joining me for a five-part series which has been sponsored by PensionBee as part of their Born to Retire campaign, celebrating people who found a second act in life during retirement. This podcast is produced in conjunction with the British Art Fair and PensionBee, who will be coming together at the British Art Fair this September, from the 24th to the 27th, 2026, at Saatchi Gallery in London, for an exhibition dedicated to celebrating artists who have come to their practice a little later in life.

To give you a little bit of context to the series: earlier this year I was invited to put out an open call, seeking artists who’d come to their practice a little bit later in life. We received over 500 applications. From that initial list, I’ve shortlisted five artists whose work and stories spoke directly to what PensionBee and their Born to Retire campaign are all about.

Across this series, we will meet each artist in turn, learning about their journey to their creative practice, why age is just a number, and why art and creativity really are for all.

Today I’m speaking with Mike Kelly. Mike spent a long career in corporate consulting, with photography always running in the background. After seeing his daughter fall in love with her time studying at Manchester Metropolitan University, Mike enrolled in the same MA in photography, starting the course the same year that she finished it. He went in without expectations and has since been amazed by how warm and inclusive he’s found the environment, despite being one of the oldest students on the course. In a short space of time, he’s picked up multiple awards and commissions, one of which includes a large-scale piece from Manchester School of Art.

In September, I’ll be showing two of Mike’s incredible photography pieces at the British Art Fair at Saatchi Gallery, and the story behind these pieces is something we dive into in this episode. So sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation with Mike Kelly.

Well, Mike, thank you very much for joining me. It’s lovely to have you here on the podcast. I’m really excited to be working with you in September at the British Art Fair, which is being sponsored by PensionBee, and you’re taking part in our exhibition, Born To. Just for the listeners at home, could you take a second to introduce yourself, tell us where you’re based and say a little bit about the medium that you work in?

Mike: Sure, and thanks for the great opportunity. I’m really happy to be involved. I’m Mike Kelly, and I’m based in Rossendale, which is about 20 miles north of Manchester, just on the edge of the Pennine Moors.

My work is broadly based around photography. For a while I called myself a photographer, but I’ve kind of drifted recently. So although it starts with photography, the final pieces are becoming a bit more detached from that.

Jo: And the whole point of this exhibition – it was an open call, there were 500 applicants, and we’ve whittled that down to five people who have been selected from that 500. As well as going on strength of practice and the works that you put forward, there was also a special element to the campaign, which looked at artists who have come to their artistic practice a little bit later in life. You’ve got a really great story as to how you came to be doing what you’re doing at the moment, because you’re currently studying and doing your Masters.

I would just love you to tell us a little bit about how you came to your artistic practice, because it’s kind of always been there, but it’s not always been the main gig, so to speak.

Mike: No, absolutely, and you’re right. Most of my career has been spent in business. It still is. I’m still very active in the consulting world, working with big companies on contract negotiations and so on.

In the background, I’ve always had an interest in photography. I never really thought of it through an art lens; it was more the commercial side. I’ve done portraits and wedding stuff in the past, that kind of thing. When I had a second pair of children about 10 years ago, I put that on ice, because I was just way too busy looking after the kids and the day job.

But one of my older daughters did a photography Masters herself, at MMU in Manchester, and I saw how much she got out of that. She absolutely loved it. She’s – I’m trying to get her age right – 25 at the moment. I decided on a whim, really, just after she’d finished that course, that maybe it would work for me. With very little forethought, I applied for the Masters literally a week or so before the course began, to the point where I actually started a couple of weeks late, by the time we got through the admin.

I went in there with no expectations at all. I just thought, “I’ll try that. I’ve got a little bit more free time now, the kids are a bit more settled in school, and I’ll just see where it goes”, without really thinking about the fact that, although I was pretty confident in my technical photography ability, I had never really thought through an artistic lens. It’s really over the last couple of years that that has clicked for me, and I’ve loved every moment of it. This opportunity is fantastic, but it’s one of several fantastic things that have happened over the course of the last couple of years, and it has been hugely fulfilling.

I should say, by the way, I turned 60 about three weeks ago. So this is a complete thrill at this point in my life, and completely unexpected.

Jo: But I think that’s what’s so wonderful about this open call as well: it’s trying to find people who’ve come to it a little bit later, and celebrating that, because art is art, and creativity is in you always. At any point in life, you can turn to it.

I would really love to know a little bit more about the materials that you work in. I know you said it’s photography, but in my opinion you really do push that into mixed media. Has doing your Masters allowed you to experiment a little bit more with photography? You said it’s always been an interest, so what has returning to study allowed you to do?

Mike: I suppose it’s two things, returning to study. One is a very, very different way of thinking – almost the opposite way of thinking to the business world. In the business world you have an output, a deliverable, that’s needed by a date, and I’m very used to working with that. I will get something done by the time it’s required, to a good level of professionalism, I hope. What the Masters drummed home very early on was: just forget that. Almost the complete opposite. It’s all about experimentation. What does this work really require to get the message across? Let’s just play with that and see where it goes. And don’t worry about the fact we’re giving you a deadline of Christmas – let’s just see where you are at Christmas. Learn through experimentation. “Learn through making” is one of the drumbeat phrases we get.

Again, I found that really difficult at first. It was hard to shake off my normal way of thinking. But that has opened up my practice – a phrase I wouldn’t have used a couple of years ago – to exploring different ways of presenting what might have started as photographic work, and it has become – mixed media is a good way of describing it.

So it means, actually, many of my works are really difficult to photograph, because they are objects, works, that react to movement or light in the room. They’re not traditional, framed pictures on the wall. Some of them fall into that space, but most of them use varying techniques, almost to disrupt perception.

I hadn’t really thought too much about that over the last couple of years, but I’m starting to recognise now what is interesting me, and the work I’ve been making over that time, and it does have that as a common thread through a lot of the work.

Jo: And a lot of your pieces explore landscape. Is that why you’re particularly drawn to photography, as a way of capturing that in its form?

Mike: It’s more, I guess, the landscape around here in Rossendale, which I know very, very well. I’ve lived here for 40-odd years, and I spent a lot of time on the hills, either walking or mountain biking – actually, a lot of mountain biking. The area around here is littered with industrial remains, the remains of the industrial revolution, and we’ll maybe come on to talk about some of that. It’s not a classically pretty landscape. It’s very beautiful, but it’s not picture-book; it’s very rugged. It’s rugged and rough, and a lot of it is scarred by history of use over hundreds of years. But it’s an interesting landscape.

Honestly, one of the reasons I started looking at landscape was practical. With the time I had to look at photography amongst all the rest of my commitments, it meant weekends when I had time, and evenings when I had time, to work. So a lot of my work has been, I guess, grounded in the local area, although it spreads beyond that. There are aspects of portraiture and so on in some of the pieces, and the people who are working in the area. But the landscape has always interested me, and this opportunity, through the Masters, has given me a reason to think about it and spend time in it in a different way than just riding or walking through.

Jo: Well, I think that’s a really nice segue into discussing the pieces that you’ve put forward and that we’re going to be showing on the stand. It’s a series of works called Threshold. When I was looking through and I saw them, I immediately thought, “Oh my goodness, these are very like Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore – these big, beautiful, monolithic pieces.” That’s out of ignorance on my part. That’s what I thought they were until I read the little blurb that you had included with them.

Could you tell me, and everyone listening, the story behind this series of works? It really is quite incredible.

Mike: Yeah, I’d love to. Stop me if I talk for too long – I can talk about this for the rest of the day if you want me to.

What’s ended up as these, as you say, quite monumental stone forms started quite differently. I was thinking about a project that could occupy me over the course of the last year. I knew we had the bicentenary approaching of something called the Weavers’ Uprising. Exactly 200 years ago, in 1826, there was a march by hand weavers across Lancashire, and in this area in particular. They marched across the moors, smashing up the new mills that were springing up at that time among the valleys. The mills were starting to use power looms – automated, new technology that was destroying their way of life in their cottages on the hills.

A lot of people will have heard about the Luddite movement, and I guess it was part of that, which spread across Europe, actually, at the time, as a reaction to this new technology. It wasn’t so much anti-technology; it was more that the shift left a lot of people behind. People weren’t considered, and it dramatically affected their livelihoods. So here the marchers, thousands of them, smashed up hundreds of these power-loom machines along the valleys, until they were eventually stopped at a place called Chatterton, just down the road from here, where troops fired into the crowd and six were shot dead.

I knew that the bicentenary of this event was coming, and I knew there were some plans locally to commemorate it. I thought that seemed like an interesting subject for some work, but I wasn’t sure how to approach it. I thought there’d be lots of different ways of tackling it, but eventually I decided I would just go and walk the route that those marchers took across the moors, because I know that route really well. I could work out where they’d been. Some of it I knew really well; some of it was a bit unknown to me. So I just set out with my camera and a very open mind, and just walked.

Over the course of a few weeks, I started to notice these stone structures that I realised I’d seen for decades, but never really knew or thought about what they were. I did a bit of research and realised that they are – pretty obviously, when you look at them – old gateposts. Ancient gateposts, all of which feature holes: hand-carved holes, one, sometimes two or three. They were very weathered, interesting objects in their own right, and I just started thinking about them. With a bit more research, I realised, first of all, that by their nature, being hand-carved, they were pre-industrial. I started to recognise that you can then see later gateposts that have metal fixings, which were post-industrial revolution. I thought that was interesting, because it’s linked to this whole story of the transition to the modern world.

Then I also realised that where these stones sit is almost always at collapsed weavers’ cottages, where the walls are still there. They were marking the edge of their ground, where they would keep their animals, so this would mark the edge of their property: the threshold of their property. So not only was it a marker of the transition to the modern world, but most of them were also physical markers. I thought, I wonder if I can find six of those stones, recognising that six people had been killed 200 years ago. I set myself that challenge, and spent another couple of months, basically, walking the moors in freezing cold last winter, until eventually I kept finding them everywhere I looked. In the end, I did find enough to complete the sequence – the sequence of six.

Jo: I just think that’s an incredible story, because looking at it, you obviously don’t understand – you see it, as I said, as this monolithic, sculptural piece, but actually they are so ingrained in the heritage and history of your local area. I think they’re so beautiful, and I also really love that they are these very rugged objects in themselves. It’s kind of like the land is almost reclaiming them, when I’m looking at them now, knowing the story.

Mike: Yeah, that’s absolutely right. I think some of these, from talking to local historians, could be three or four hundred years old. They go way back to almost medieval times, and you can see it in the lichen and the wearing. Some of them – again, I’m starting to recognise – are clearly much older than others. But, yes, they’re almost like individuals. They’re very different. Each one of them is very different, and they’re in different places, distributed across the hills along the route of this walk.

What I’ve talked about so far was the finding of the stones, but then the next part of the work was: okay, how do I present these in a compelling way that isn’t just a photographic snap, that doesn’t just look like a pretty landscape with a rock in it? That again took a long time, working on the treatment, the paper to use, the printing type to use, and exploring how much to make these things visible.

Jo: I liked the scale of them as well.

Mike: Actually, I wanted them to quietly assert their presence, and to do, as you described, just make people stop and pause for a moment and think, “Hang on, what is that? What’s going on there?” If you see one of these in the flesh, or in the stone, as you walk past, it will change. As the light lands on it, it will change. The way they’re printed is on a very, very smooth GF Smith paper, which has almost zero grain, but they’re printed with UV ink – just black ink on black paper. So what you’re actually seeing is the light catching the edges of the ink. They do shift as the light changes through the course of the day, or as you move.

Jo: Yeah. Just really beautiful. I think when you say “photography”, it sort of – no, I’m trying to think of the right word – belittles the technical elements that you’ve put into these prints. We’re really lucky that we’re going to have two of the six on the stand, which is great, and, really excitingly, two of the walls are actually going to be painted yellow. I was very excited when we decided that was the colour direction for two of the walls.

Mike, I think we could talk about this for the entirety of the podcast. We were just discussing your works that are on the stand, or that will be on the stand, at the fair – the series of two pieces from a larger series of six. Something you haven’t actually mentioned, I believe, was that the ideas for this initially came from a commission for your university.

Mike: Not quite.

Jo: Oh, okay.

Mike: So, I produced this work – I was halfway through the process, coming towards the production stage of what was probably a six-month process that I’ve just talked you through. The university then ran their annual – what they call the Art School Commission process. Interestingly, that process hadn’t been open to photography students previously, but this year it was. So I pitched this concept to the university as well. The idea was that it would give me an opportunity to work at scale. The commission is for work each year to hang in the university, and I proposed producing some of these images at a very large scale.

The commission was accepted. That was another great experience to be part of. So we now have three of those stones standing in the School of Art at Manchester. They’re each about 6 metres high and 3 metres wide. They’re not the black-on-black versions; they’re actually black on white. I thought black on black was a bit too funereal for that space.

The space is interesting because the stones actually loom over the textiles department of the School of Art, where they have looms in the other sense. They’ve got their own looms, where the new textile students learn weaving technology on small baby looms, but for the next year they will be looked over by these very large, quite odd monolithic stones looking down at them. The other side of that space is the café, which is open to the public as well. It’s been a fantastic process to be part of.

Jo: It’s just so strange when things join the dots like that. I just think that’s incredible. And then, as you said, the café is open to the public, so if anyone finds themselves in and around Manchester, do pop in and have a look. They’re on display for a year.

Mike: Yeah, it’ll be about a year. They’re in the Lowry Building. It’s quiet over the summer, because only a few people are usually still around at the moment, but they’ll burst into life again in the autumn.

Jo: Yeah. Well, I want to talk to you a little bit about your practice now, given that, as you say, you’ve just turned 60. What does it mean to you to be building this practice now, rather than, say, at 25 or 30?

Mike: When I was in my 20s, I was briefly split between going into business and technology – which I was interested in at the time, because computers were new – or graphic design, which I’d studied at A level. It was much easier to get work in technology than in graphic design, and that’s the way I went. But in the background I’ve always had an interest in presentation. I’ve always been the person in the office who does the final polish of the slides before they’re presented, and thinks about the best way to present complex subjects to clients, for instance.

Having said that, I don’t think I would have had the right kind of experience then. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d strayed down an artistic route at that stage in life. Now I feel I’m starting late, and there’s a lot of stuff inside that’s coming out, finding a way to get out. There are things I’m very comfortable with, I guess – basic things like budgeting for these large pieces, and project-managing them so they’re completed in time to put on the wall on a certain date, or getting the work to you in time, by a certain date. I’ll make that happen. I’m used to that from my day job, and it’s something I recognise in some of the younger students on the course: they struggle with some of that – the basic professional discipline that you need to make this a sustainable practice.

And from the content side as well, there are a lot of things that have been scratching at me over the years, and now I’ve got a licence to go and explore them. I’ve got some of the tools and ways of thinking, learned through the MA course in particular, that allow me to do that without feeling, “Oh, this is silly – it’s just me playing with pictures up in my room on my computer, or printing stuff out.” I’ve got a framework to think about that, and a way of working.

Jo: Yeah. And I’m interested in asking how you feel about the term “emerging artist”. Traditionally it’s seen as something where you’re emerging if you’re 23 or 24 and just coming out of university. How does the term “emerging artist” sit with you, and would you describe yourself that way?

Mike: It’s another one of these terms that are very familiar in the art world but completely new to me. In the last 18 months, two years, I’m starting to understand, “Oh, that’s what ‘emerging artist’ means. That’s what people typically think of.” To me, it’s all new anyway, and I’m just treating this whole adventure as just that. I’ve had an approach of trying to bite off a little bit more than I think I can chew, and just seeing what happens. That’s served me well. I’ve entered work into open calls, and it’s been a thrill to have those accepted, and that makes the next open call a little bit easier.

At the turn of the year, I submitted some work to Bury Art Museum’s open and won a prize there, which was amazing. The prize was a two-week solo show, so I had a two-week solo show, and that was amazing. Each one of these has been “Oh wow, this is happening now”, and “this is happening now”, and each one requires me to take a deep breath, pull my socks up and learn some more skills – how to hang a solo show, how to promote it and get people along. So, to your question about emerging artists, I’m sort of in that fish tank, and it’s happening to me a bit at the moment, and I’m enjoying it. I don’t know if it’s a positive – maybe it is helpful – that I don’t have the context that others would have who’ve been struggling with some of these things.

I’m starting to understand a little bit of the way the art world works as I’m getting more exposure to curators and gallerists and so on, which is interesting. It is different to the world of business, but I’m used to dealing with different organisations and different stakeholder groups, and understanding the wants and needs of different people. So it’s kind of familiar territory with a different language around it.

Jo: Got you. But all the things you’ve learned, you know, that bit in the middle, so to speak, when you were doing your consulting, in midlife – it’s all things you’ve learned there that you’ve been able to apply in your art practice.

I’m interested in asking about the term “emerging” because I’ve spoken to a few artists in this process who find the term a bit sticky, which is completely fine – everyone’s allowed to think their own thing about it. But it’s really lovely to hear you say, “Well, it’s a brand new term for me. If that’s what it is, whatever, great. I’m just going to crack on. It doesn’t really matter.” I also think it’s really nice to reclaim the term “emerging”, because you can emerge at any point in your life, in anything. What this open call has shown me in particular is how the art world pigeonholes certain terms. We’ve got a really bad habit of overlooking people or writing people off – and I think society as well. You have this thing where the older you get, people think, “Oh well, you’ve not really got anything to add to the conversation”, and that’s the complete opposite.

Mike: Maybe. I would just say, I mean, there may be layers of the art world where that is the case. I have to say my experience over the last couple of years has been that I’ve been hugely welcomed by everyone I’ve talked to, from local galleries, to this commissions process, where I was sitting in a room pitching alongside five girls in their young 20s who are in the middle of their fine art degree, their BA course. Everyone treated me completely equally. In fact, the woman who was leading the Art School Commission process said, “You know, we don’t have age in this building”, and it absolutely feels like that. Once I got over the first few weeks of being slightly out of place, and a bit older than everybody, with all these “fellow kids”, it quickly drops away. I’ve not encountered anything but positivity from everyone I’ve dealt with in this world, honestly, and I’m not just saying that. It’s been hugely welcoming.

Jo: But that is amazing to hear, and it should be welcoming. I think age should almost be irrelevant. At the end of the day, the thing that matters is creating these beautiful things and helping people tell interesting stories, if you’re commissioning something, or you’ve been paid to commission something into existence.

I want to ask you a little bit about how it feels to be selected for the British Art Fair. As we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, it was an open call process. For people who don’t know what an open call is, it’s basically an announcement that goes out to the public, and if you want to apply, you’re very, very welcome to. We had over 500 applications for five spots. What drew you to apply? It’s a bit of a two-pronged question: I would love to know what drew you to apply to the open call, and also how it feels to be selected.

Mike: Yeah, I keep my eye out for open calls that might be a good fit with my work. I can’t remember where I spotted this one – it will probably have been on Instagram, where I spend a bit too much time these days. But it very quickly seemed to tick some boxes that I thought would make it a good fit for me. I was looking for people who are older, coming into the art world, with an interesting journey, and I am conscious of the route I’d taken, particularly following my daughter. Her being almost a kind of mentor to me in the early stages of my MA was fantastic. I thought that was interesting and worth sharing with people.

I was also really keen, with the Threshold work in particular, to take it to as wide an audience as I can. I’m pleased with the work, and there’s also something about Rossendale which gets a little bit neglected. Not many people have heard of it, but it’s a really interesting place, so I’m always keen to tell that story on a bigger stage. So for those reasons. And it was a relatively straightforward process, I think. I submitted, and then, as I have with other submissions, I just put it out of my mind, because in most cases you’ll hear something back, and in most cases you’re not successful, for whatever reason. That’s fine. So it was a real thrill when I opened that email a few weeks ago and heard that I’d been selected. I hadn’t appreciated how much interest you’d had in this.

And again, for me, it’s a fantastic step to be taking – what feels like a step onto a bigger stage than I’ve had so far. My solo show was in a small gallery in Manchester, and I’ve had some work in local art galleries, as I’ve mentioned. So to have the opportunity to be with some other really fantastic artists – I haven’t seen the other selected people for this open call, which I’m really looking forward to as well – but to be in London, to be at Saatchi, is fantastic. It’s great on my CV, of course, and I want to tell people about it, but I’m also just learning my way around that world. As I said, I haven’t visited Saatchi Gallery, though I’ve visited a few of the others across London, so I’m just thrilled to have the opportunity to be in that space.

Jo: Yeah. And it’s such an exciting opportunity for me as a curator as well, to find five artists who all have incredibly interesting backstories, but whose practices are also very advanced, even if it’s only been a few years of everyone picking up their materials and working with them. It’s a real thrill for me to be able to showcase you all, as well as for the people listening, because this podcast series is being released one episode per week in the run-up to the British Art Fair. Why should someone listening come along to the British Art Fair and see the stand?

Mike: I mean, I think I’m really keen to get along to the British Art Fair. I think everybody should be. From what I’ve read about it, the standard of art that’s been shown in the past sounds spectacular, and it seems like a great opportunity to see a really wide range of interesting work, from largely contemporary artists, in one go, which doesn’t happen all that often. That in itself is exciting, and I think what you are putting together through the stand is a fantastic complement to that. There are a lot of established names in the main art fair, but you’ve taken time to select a small number of, as you describe, emerging artists – new artists that people won’t have heard of – who will be producing something hopefully equally interesting as some of the larger-scale works there, and the more established artists that are there. It’s really interesting. I think that juxtaposition between new artists that people won’t know and some very well-known names is brilliant. And, again for me, I’m genuinely really interested to see the other four that you picked, and how everything comes together.

Jo: I think also what’s exciting is that I firmly believe each of the five of you – your work holds up against our very established modern British artists, the big names, as well as the more cutting-edge contemporary pieces being shown throughout the fair. Something else that’s quite exciting about the stand is that the other galleries are able to submit works to show alongside your pieces. So I also get the opportunity to select a small number of your contemporaries, and perhaps some people that you are influenced and inspired by, to show alongside you, which is just – I have never come across an open call like it before.

Mike: I think it’s – yeah, it’s been a real thrill, and we’ve not even put the work on the stand yet.

Jo: Yeah. Mike, we’re coming to the end of our conversation, so I have the penultimate question to ask you. I ask this of all my guests on the podcast. It’s normally the question that I end on, but it’s the penultimate one in this series, and it’s quite a big question. You can take it as personal to you or as far-reaching as possible, and you can take a beat to think about it as well. But my question for you is: why is art important?

Mike: Okay. It’s a pretty big question, isn’t it? Yeah. I think this is both general and personal. It opens up a way of seeing the world differently, and asking questions that you might not otherwise have thought of. I’m trying to do that through my own work. And when I look at work by more established artists across mediums – I’m reading some interesting stuff at the moment – I can see the way in which they’re opening up my perception of the world and uncovering layers of meaning and interest that might have passed me by, like those stones on the moors. I’ve walked past those for years, but when I look at them through the lens of art, all of these other layers of meaning become of interest.

Jo: Beautiful, and yeah, it’s everywhere, isn’t it? Art is a way of recording human history and our footprint, and a way of celebrating that, and also – as you say – uncovering stories that are potentially lost. My final question to you: as we’ve discussed, the stand is sponsored by PensionBee and the campaign that they’re running alongside this, called Born to Retire, so the exhibition on the stand is called Born To. If you could finish the following sentence: “I was born to…” What do you think you were born to?

Mike: Oh, that’s harder. The word that immediately comes to mind is “explore”. I don’t mean that in a geographic sense, but that’s what I feel I’m doing, even more so now than maybe I have through the rest of my life. So – if it can be an open word – I’ll go with “born to explore”.

Jo: Oh, I love that. That’s amazing. Mike, it’s been a real joy to have you on the podcast, to speak with you and learn a little bit more about your practice. I’m really looking forward to showing your work at the British Art Fair in September.

Mike: Likewise, Jo. Great to meet you. I’m really looking forward to it. See you there.

Jo: And there you have it: another episode of Jo’s Art History Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please make sure to like, rate and subscribe on whatever platform you’re listening on. Additionally, if you feel anyone you know would benefit from listening to this episode, please make sure to pass it on, as this helps other people discover the podcast.

This episode is part of a five-part series sponsored by PensionBee as part of their Born to Retire campaign. Across the series, we’re meeting five artists who’ve been shortlisted from over 500 applicants from an open call that went live in early 2026. Their works will be shown at the British Art Fair from the 24th to the 27th of September 2026. The exhibition is called Born To and is curated by me, Jo McLaughlin. The exhibition aims to celebrate artists who have come to their practice later in life, and to show you that art and creativity really are for all, regardless of your age.

A huge thank you once again to PensionBee for sponsoring this series and for making these conversations possible. Please make sure to check out the other episodes that are available, both within this series and outside it. We have over 120 episodes in our back catalogue. Once again, I’ve been Jo McLaughlin, your host and resident art historian. Thank you so much for listening. I’ll see you next time, and until then, remember: art is for all. Bye.