If I had a pound for the number of times someone has told me that Auld Reekie/The Grassmarket or any other part of Edinburgh is ‘nae oil painting’ (inferring a suggested lack of aesthetic pleasure in any given image), I’d have retired a long time ago a very rich man indeed!

I decided to resolve that matter by taking our world famous Grassmarket and just creating a magic, snowy, Christmas scene working from my own imagery as reference, completely reworking the composition and image and putting the whole thing together as a digital oil painting thus rendering the ‘nae oil painting’ statement as nonsense.

And here it is, for your eyes before the rest of the world. The Grassmarket fictionally at Christmas, as seen in my minds’ eye!