ARNOLD Schwarzenegger claimed this honorary Tauntonian artist’s work for his own, personal collection.

Throughout December, the vivid, experimental creations of internationally celebrated Jack Coulthard, 83, will hang in the Creative Innovation Centre in Taunton’s Paul Street in a show called ‘Bigger Pictures’.

Born in 1930s Yorkshire, the energetic Coulthard has spent his artistic life actively defying convention, scouring the depths of imagination, not to recreate what life looks like, but how it feels, in ground-breaking style.

His back catalogue sweeps philosophy, sex, conflict, myth, class tension, Britishness, the grey between id and ego, the Salvation Army and more., but whatever his subject he seeks to “look into the mouth of time, not backwards after it.”

He has lived with his wife, Barbara, in Kingston St Mary since 1961 – they came to Somerset for Jack to start work as Somerset College of Art’s new drawing and painting lecturer.

He left in 1970 to paint full-time, touting canvases at London galleries until interest took and offers rolled in.

Schwarzenegger’s Coulthard is a ruthlessly discordant image of a Jewish concentration camp inmate singing, emaciated.

Jack says: “The step at the bottom becomes a stage. In Hebrew it says ‘hey man, what would you say in that position?’.”

It’s thought that Schwarzenegger took one look and said “yes, this is our life.’ “That’s as far as I know,” Jack adds.

‘Bigger Pictures’ runs from December 6 until Thursday, January 2, from 9.30am to 12.30pm, Monday to Friday, and 9.30am to 5pm on Saturdays.