This painting is one of a number that greets visitors in the hallway of Douglas MacDiarmid’s apartment on rue Cavallotti – a semi-abstract image he dreamed of after having dinner in Paris with a cousin visiting from New Zealand.

A colourful 116 x 89cm acrylic on canvas, it has multiple forms in sets of four – 20 exploitations of the four. A curious choice of subject matter for a man who claims not to be able to count and simply does not do numbers in his everyday life in any willing shape or form, but we can’t help what comes to us by way of inspiration in our sleep.

Douglas played with the painting on and off for two years before it found completion. He also describes the painting as a ‘foreplay’ on words. And the more you look at it, the more you see.

“As always, I have paper and pen by my bed and I made a note of it… the colours and shapes. I always dream in vivid colour, most people don’t remember colours.” Little wonder he has always had trouble sleeping when there are so many enticing images percolating in his head.

Through history, dreams have regularly informed particular artists’ paintings, feeding the imaginative or creative process – Albrecht Dürer, William Blake and Salvador Dali being notable examples. In fact, dream art is now recognised as its own genre. In Douglas’ work, dreams have played a part, but are “not necessarily indispensable”.

“They say dreams only take a fraction of a second, but this is absolute nonsense, a dream can take an entire night. You just go back and back to it, and it goes on, as far as I am concerned, very definitely.”

Even now he has retired his brushes, MacDiarmid still dreams he is painting and, when he wakes up, expects he is going to find this new creation on the easel in his studio. “Oh yes, wheels within wheels.”