CHARLES MacCarthy remembers his late friend John Wright not with broad brush strokes, but in those subtle touches of colour that capture character.

Such touches marked the friendship between the two artists - and a tribute to one of Leominster's top talents at the town's festival.

Charles, from Kingsland, is quick to say that there are those who knew John better than he. Sometimes it seemed as if John enjoyed - even encouraged - an elusive, anecdotal existence.

But eventually every "biographer" needs a portrait of their subject before they can begin to delininate a life. A posthumous, and rare, exhibition of his work at Leominster Library reveals just what John saw in himself.

Only in the studio would the John who played the Joker over endless card games at The Grapes, or could trump all-comers swapping stories at The Black Horse, show his hand. The hand he had learned to steady again by painstakingly following a labyrinth of little dotted lines when a stroke cost him control of an arm.

Stark self-portraits - in oils and sketches - communicate something of what he was suffering over the years before his death in January.

Physical weariness, inner strength, watchful, hooded eyes - John always needed to know exactly what was going on in his studio.

Though he painted prolifically, his perfectionism meant few of works were ever shown publically.

"If he thought it wasn't right, he didn't want it," said Sue James, who shared John's life for 14 years. They got talking at his 60th birthday party - celebrated at his then flat in Bridge Street - and kept talking until the early hours.

"He was always such an interesting, enigmatic man. He had something to say on most things, but there was a wild streak to him," she said.

Charles was struck by just how many people around Leominster knew John but had no inkling of his talent. They met when John came to see a small exhibition of Charles's work at the town's community centre and bonded over shared student days - generations apart - at London's Camberwell College of Arts and Crafts.

While the two could talk intently about art, Charles never really got close to what had shaped John's life. This was what the work hinted at and "he gave himself a hard time", said Charles.

John came to Leominster in 1986 having thrown in 15 years as an art teacher to set up a jewellery and enamalling business. He had just begun to exhibit again - the 2004 h.art event at Hereford Art Gallery was his first full showing since 1977 - when he suffered his stroke.

A bad bout of lung cancer hit his health hard four years earlier. John struggled on until pneumonia set in at the start of the year. He died at Leominster Community Hospital aged 74 and is buried at the Humber Woodland of Remembrance.

Together, Charles and Sue selected a set of John's works - from sketch studies of the human form to the haunting self-portraits, out of the 80 either hanging or stored at his flat- cum-studio in Coningsby Road.

The display, in Leominster library for another fortnight, is intended as a tribute.

And if it encourages wider interest...

"Well, we think he'd be pretty chuffed about it," said Charles.

l Leominster Festival Art Exhibition features the work of nine local artists and continues until June 24, open during normal library hours (closed Sundays and Mondays).