FOR artist Charles Debenham, painting street scenes of Colchester is just half the pleasure of his work.

There are also the people he meets, like the churchgoer, who admired his painting of a sex shop.

“I was sitting just outside the Fat Cat pub looking at this wonderful view of the shop on the corner of Butt Road and Alexandra Road,” he explains.

“I could see this smartly dressed man going up and down the road putting pamphlets through doors.

“Eventually, he came over and remarked what a beautiful picture it was. He said to me: ‘Oh I do love that picture, so pretty’.

“Then he told me he was from the local church trying to drum up support for Easter, which is why I didn’t really have the heart to tell this deeply religious man that what he was actually admiring was a sex shop.”

Anyone who has been living in Colchester for the past 30 years will recognise Charles Debenham.

Some may know him from his work, some may even have a Debenham or two hanging on their walls. More likely is that they recognise Charles as that man who hangs around street corners sketching Colchester’s street life.

With windswept grey hair and a distinctive RAF fighter pilot type moustache, he does rather stand out in a crowd, especially with a pad and brush in his hands.

But while he may have become a bit of a Colchester icon, the subjects he paints are anything but. They are deliberately everyday, with Charles often choosing to ignore the obvious.

Charles says: “It has to have something that interests me, whether it be an amusing scene or the way the buildings look in the light.

“I couldn’t have done this anywhere else. I’ve lived here all my life and I think you have to have a very close association with a place to be able to do the kind of work I have done.”

Charles, who turned 80 this year, graduated from the Colchester School of Art in 1953 and still goes out six times a week to paint.

“I’m usually out for about six hours,” he says, “in rain, snow, all kinds of weather. I’ve constructed a little roof over my easel so that the water keeps off it.”

Charles also famously goes out every Christmas Day to paint.

“Well, it’s a good way to get out of helping with the dinner,” he grins. “One year I did a painting of the station at Thorpe le Soken which spanned the Millennium. I started it on Christmas Day and finished it on New Year’s Day.”

While Charles has already begrudgingly achieved cult status in the town, this month sees the professional debut of another Debenham, Charles’s grandson, Alex.

Alex, 30, is about to go and study at an art school in Florence, Italy, but before he does, he will be showing some of his work alongside his grandfather’s at the Geedon Gallery, in Fingringhoe.

The former Colchester Royal Grammar School student has been painting since he was 18.

Alex says: “I suppose having a grandfather who paints must have had some kind of influence, but really my painting was developed completely independent of his.

“Actually, he’s my fiercest critic.”

Specialising in distinctive still lifes and portraits, Alex made the decision to become an artist fulltime only in the last year.

“I did a week’s course last year,”

he adds, “which was run by the same art school in Florence, but took place in Sweden, and that was it really. I’ve been working in advertising in London for the last few years, but painting a lot in my spare time. I worked quite close to the National Portrait Gallery, so most lunchtimes I would go down there and sketch some of the pictures.

“A bit like my grandfather, people would come up to me and comment on my work and, actually, that’s how I got some of my first commissions.”

Charles and Alex Debenham are exhibiting work as part of the Autumn Exhibition at the Geedon Gallery, in Fingringhoe.

It runs until Sunday, from 11am to 5.30pm daily, and thereafter until December 15 by appointment.

For more details, call the gallery on 01206 729151.