"I'm just a monkey with a paint brush. Put something in front of me and I paint it. I can only paint what I can see."

Brett isn't at all impressed by the concept of art as something highfalutin', nor himself as someone particularly talented. He's most insistent that he's uninteresting and not worth writing about.

"My father was endlessly on the move. He was an entrepreneur, a government official, a businessman and an idealist. He worked for years in third world countries but he refused to take bribes. So he never got rich.

I was born in Indonesia, then we moved to Thailand, then Kuching in Malaysia, then the West Indies, then Kenya. I was bought up in all those places. Kuching was best 'cos I could go and buy clay from the local quarry and take it home and make things.

I'm not quite certain what order we moved through all those places. I know I was older when we were in Kenya 'cos I have photographs of myself in Mombassa. I went through a stage of thinking I'd be a rock star - a guitarist. So I have pictures of me with my Fender Strat."

Brett now lives in Thailand, a couple of hours north of Bangkok in a tiny village in the country, miles from anywhere. "I've been there seven years. Before that, for five years I had a gallery and workshop in Vence in the South of France. With a huge staff helping me to produce art, and also sell it.

But it got too bureaucratic - dealing with the French tax office - the VAT man - the local council. I was no longer an artist - I was running a business. I wanted to get back to what I liked best - being a monkey with a paint brush."