EXCUSE his pun, but Neil Simone is calling his first show of 2014 the “Easel”y Unlike Any Other Exhibition.

The Whixley artist has created a series of oil-painted free-standing “easel paintings” that turn out to be painted on a flat piece of wood but with “3-D shelving” that gives the effect of an easel, courtesy of his trademark trompe l’oeil optical illusions.

On the cover of the exhibition invitation for Saturday’s preview is a work entitled “It’s About Time”, under the headline And Now For Something Completely Different…

That headline is not entirely true but it was about time that Neil returned to his “easel” art. “I did the original one in the Eighties, when I put it in a furniture shop window in Parliament Street in Harrogate.

“It went into the window at £8,000, a price which I’d never achieved before, but because of the complexity of the piece, someone came along and bought it, but I haven’t done one like it since then.”

Until his sudden burst of easel work in large, medium and small sizes this winter. He was working on the first, Dimensional Aspects, when What’s On visited Neil and his wife, fellow artist Heather, in December. “It takes not as long as you think to paint it, but possibly longer,” he says cryptically, and he would appear loath to part hands with a piece that represents the rebirth of an idea he cherished but did not pursue for so long.

Would he sell it? “A work like this would normally go at £9,000, so maybe if someone offered around £20,000, but it’s not for sale,” he says. “It is not for sale…unless I do something that surpasses even that.”

You can judge whether he has done so when he exhibits the likes of the aforementioned It’s About Time, The Forest Jigsaw, Light Relief, Lakeland Reflections and the smaller paintings The Open Sea, Window View and Meanderings from this weekend.

In his London days, the half-Italian, half-English Neil had failed to gain a place at art school but his working pattern as a garage forecourt attendant enabled to pursue his passion for painting.

“The reason I did that job was it was shift work, where I would either finish at midday and paint in the afternoon or work in the afternoon and paint in the morning.”

The self-trained artist with a D in Art at A-level moved north from Harrow to Harrogate after his landlord, a Mr Hale, liked one of his paintings. “I was shooting at it with an air rifle because I felt the painting had failed but he asked me to show him some other works and then asked me to work for art department at the Road Transport Industry Training Board,” says Neil.

Mr Hale had a property in The Priory, the house with the turret in Trinity Road, Harrogate. “No one had lived in the basement for 50 years. It was damp – I didn’t know how damp at the time – but he suggested that with my imagination I could make it a really good place to live, taking money off my rent to do it up,” says Neil.

He and his first wife moved north, kick-starting his career as an artist. “That was in 1970 and the first exhibition was a group show in the Valley Gardens, where I had tremendous success,” he says.

“No one had ever seen the sort of work I was doing but it all died down from that initial reaction, so I turned myself into a door-to-door painting salesman, going out once a week, when my paintings cost £10 each, and I’d go to Ashville, where a lot of Americans from the Menwith Hill base lived, and I’d knock on the door and ask if they were interested in original artwork.”

He was painting skies and landscapes in unusual colours at the time, but when his work was rejected by the Victoria Gallery, he was so “upset and angry” that he went back to ask the Harrogate gallery owner.

She said he painted well but needed a unique angle to his work. Neil came up with what was to become his trademark. “It’s the concept of adding a whole new dimension by being drawn into a room in a painting through painting a landscape within a room, so you are in both environments: the interior and the exterior,” he says.

“I hadn’t sold a work for eight weeks when I did the first one, but as soon as I did it, I was flooded with ideas and couldn’t paint fast enough and I haven’t really stopped since. I’m 66 now, time is running out, but I’ve still got so many ideas.”

What happened to the air rifle, Neil? “I do still have it,” he says. “But I don’t shoot at my paintings as much.”

And Now For Something Completely Different…Original Oil Paintings and Prints by Neil Simone and Heather Simone, at The Simone Gallery, The Old School, Franks Lane, Whixley, near York; open daily from Sunday to April 6, 11am to 4pm.

Did you know?

When he paints, Neil Simone separates his oil paints into the individual cups of Ferrero Rocher trays. "They are the perfect fit", he says