After meeting at a party, theirs was an instant connection. Vaines says: “Like all the most interesting people there, we were crammed onto a tiny balcony to enjoy a smoke. Lacking a cigar himself, I instinctively shared my Romeo y Julieta with someone I immediately recognised as a kindred spirit – ebullient, funny and incisive, with a wonderful British eccentricity.

“My connection with him was cemented when I went to a private show of his work. Hugo’s portraiture reveals his subjects’ personalities, often with a startling clarity, in both the way he captures an essence of them, whether resting, engaged in intense conversations, or directly connecting with the artist with a look or a gesture, and by his careful curation of objects around them. And his landscape work mines a powerful sense of the unconscious – with or without intriguing figures who navigate through washes of light and colour that brilliantly evoke both time and space, or seem caught in webs of branches or dense foliage that suggest an encounter with inner, powerful forces.”

Inspired by “the pole bearers of post-Impressionism and early Expressionism”, David Milne, Michael Andrews, Walter Sickert and late Monet, Hugo Hamper-Potts’s work is focused on three basic things: places, people and the weather.

He says: “I like the fact that as everything is in a constant stage of change, nature is constantly moving and never still, and humans are always getting older day by day. I try to express this movement of time in my paintings to give them a timeless quality. I want my landscape work to feel pre-historic, as well as being there today, and tomorrow. In my portrait work, I like the figures to be the anchor of their environment, trying to make that precise moment in time permanent before it falls apart and changes into something else.

“In terms of technique, I like to suggest things representationally with very mild suggestions of paint. When you look up close, they appear completely abstract, and slowly fall into a familiar image once you step back.”

Vaines adds: “I think he’s a remarkable painter, incapable of making a mark which lacks authenticity and insight, and I cannot wait to see his future work. He’s an artist of real stature.”

Face to Face: A Celebration of Portraiture is on display at Marlborough Gallery until July 12. You can also catch Hugo Hamper-Potts’s work at the University of Kent’s Studio 3 Gallery until July 9 and in a solo show at C.G. Williams in Siena in September.