Patrick Heron

March 20, 1999

At 79 Patrick Heron still wore bright pink socks, turquoise blue shirts, and emerald jumpers. They suited him. Young at heart, charm personified, he made your heart sing. His paintings do the same - optimistic, zestful, uplifting, and warm, they speak of affection and joy in a most unBritish way, his

scarlets and vermilions so intensely rich you could warm your hands in front of them. Booker prize-winner A S Byatt speaks for many when

she says: ''I don't know anyone who didn't love him.''

Heron was among the most distinguished and influential painters of postwar Britain, pioneering abstraction in the 1950s. Like his hero Matisse he adored colour, over a 65-year career never wavering in his belief that colour was ''both the subject and the means, the form and the content, the image and the meaning'' of art.

He was hugely articulate, and a notable, eloquent, and engaging writer who contributed regularly to the New Statesman in the 1950s, and later the Guardian. Yet he only wrote out of conviction. ''I never sought to write,'' he once told me. ''I only did it when asked.'' Passionate about all aspects of art and art education, he was at his best when roused to champion causes. Then he could appear fierce - on paper at least.

I was once present when Mrs Thatcher told a story about her early days as Education Minister when Henry Moore (and Heron) visited her to argue on behalf of art students. She obviously didn't recognise Heron, because her story was not entirely accurate - a fact Heron made plain in the newspapers the next day. He also took great glee in turning down a knighthood offered by her government. ''They kept on ringing me up. They couldn't believe I really meant no. In fact, they counted on my giving in for so long that that year there was no arts knighthood. No time to find a substitute!''

He first saw Eagle's Nest his wondrous home, perched high on the Cornish coast in 1927, moving there in 1956. After his wife died in 1979 he was somewhat isolated there but loved the place so much that to leave would have been impossible.Once he took me clambering over its steep, boulder-strewn gradients, proudly showing off his bushes and plants cherished by the warm Gulf Stream. ''My wife made the garden. I just took over from her,'' he maintained.

Some criticised Heron's work as ''decorative'', but in the last decade

of his life he went from strength to strength, producing ever more adventurous and enthralling work which vindicated his approach. His Camden show of 1994 and big Tate retrospective last year came at the right time to confirm his stature.

In 1997 the RSW asked me to invite artists of my choice to the RSA. I wrote to his dealer; got no reply. One Saturday taking my courage in both hands I rang him at home. The dealer had never passed on the letter. ''You can have any pictures you want!'' he exclaimed. It was to be his last appearance in Scotland.

His Christmas cards sit on my mantelpiece, the writing shaky in his last one. Meanwhile, Heron's new public piece remains for all to enjoy: a massive 50ft high Big Painting Sculpture for Bressenden Place at Victoria, unveiled by the Deputy Prime Minister at the end of November. Designed by Heron's architect daughter and husband, it features his signature discs of bright colour, and remind us of his panache and joie de vivre.