THE FIRST painting by Andrew Litten in the catalogue of his exhibition ID Smear at the Millennium Gallery, St Ives, is an oil on acquired wood, entitled Father Hated Me, He Frequently Says, But These Days He Is Content In His Unfinished Aloneness, Just Quietly Doing Quiet Things Around The House.

Whether a signpost, guide or warning, as to what follows is not stated, but the 40 or so works it introduces are just as, if not even more, challenging.

A largely self-taught artist, born and bred in Aylesbury, the nearest he has been to formal training were the evening classes in life drawing that came about because of an interest in expressionist art, while still at school. He later worked in photographic studios in London and Oxford, and it was there that visits to the studio of Richard Hamilton rekindled his interest in painting.

He came to live and work in Cornwall 11 years ago, since when he has exhibited from Penzance to St Ives, plus London, Dublin, New York and Berlin.

His work in the Milwaukee Art Museum was included in the exhibition No Soul, For Sale in 2010 at Tate Modern, and he was also an exhibitor at the recent 54th Venice Bienalle.

Coming face to face with the artist and his work for the first time some eight years ago, I felt then that the fact he had chosen to set up his studio in faraway Fowey rather than St Ives or Newlyn spoke volumes about his approach.

Talking about his work he said: "I paint surrounded by hundreds of paintings. Everything is on the move and ideas can just flow from one piece to another. A sort of cross-pollination occurs, allowing leaps in development of images."

His unusual approach may have changed since then, but his paintings are still not only different, but difficult in many ways to come to terms with.

While they are concerned with the qualities and push and pull, of paint, they also comment upon the human condition.

From large striking works as Paranoid Man and Machismo Time to smaller but equally compelling and complex Attack and Artificial Eye, they are not for the faint-hearted.

Like life itself, his paintings operate on different levels and the things to be discovered and read in them are indeed various, while at the same time deep and difficult, touching and tragic, something akin to a meeting between Alfred Wallis and Francis Bacon on an unforgiving, dark and stormy night.

As honest as they are harrowing, and as diverse and difficult as any assembly of human beings can be, ID Smear can be seen, admission free, in the Millennium Gallery, St Ives, 10am to 5pm, Monday to Saturday, until February 28.

Gallery director Joseph Clarke with Andrew Litten's Machismo Time.