"I usually keep people away from my studio,” says artist David Armitage with a small smile, as The Argus photographer and I step over tins of paint in an outhouse at his home in East Hoathly.

The studio, as any artist knows, is something of a sacred space. Within its walls, work can turn from a success to a failure – and sometimes back again – in just a few hours. No wonder Armitage has furnished his with a well-stocked wine rack.

As he puts it, “It’s a joyous thing, painting... until it’s not.”

Against the back wall are stacked the paintings which occupy much of his time, huge, colour-saturated abstracts that invite meditation. There is only a small clue as to the work for which he is best known – a cuddly ginger cat toy sitting in a wicker basket. This is Hamish, star of children’s classic The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch, written in the 1970s by Armitage’s wife Ronda and illustrated by him.

Walking on Beachy Head one day, Armitage’s son asked him what the wire between the cliff and the lighthouse was for.

“That? Well, it’s for the lighthouse keeper’s lunch,” he replied. Some 40 years later, the book – and its many spin-off titles – continue to delight new generations. Next month sees the launch of a touring show based on The Lighthouse Keeper’s Cat.

The couple made around 36 picture books together before Armitage decided to return to his roots in fine art. Born in Tasmania, he trained in both illustration and fine art in Melbourne before moving to New Zealand, where he had considerable success as a painter.

“Almost too much,” he remarks. “People wanted to buy paintings I hadn’t even painted yet.” But when the family later moved to the UK, the situation changed and Armitage returned to illustration to make a living.

He adored creating the artwork for The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch and others but craved the freedom of painting without a brief.

There is a pointed lack of message in his paintings, an encouragement to feel rather than think. “The stuff I love has nothing to do with words,” explains Armitage, whose shelves groan under the weight of classical music CDs.

“Someone could come here from another planet, see one of my paintings and get something from it. I see it as like listening to music; music tells you nothing about sex, politics, Obama’s waistline... yet people are deeply affected by it.” Needless to say, he has no time for conceptual art and even took part in an Oxford Union debate once arguing that it didn’t deserve to be called art.

Armitage’s work responds to visual cues – the light and space of his native Northern Australia, the rich hues of Asian countries, textiles and symbolism.

Paint is layered and rubbed off, drawn over in glowing pastels, until the marks seems to shimmer with energy.

Through his paintings’ scale and sense of depth, he invites the viewer to feel they can step into them and disappear for a while. “They are selfcontained worlds which may (or may not) have anything to do with the world which we inhabit,” he writes in the foreword to one of his catalogues.

“They are what they are and engage because of this. The magic comes from the marks.”

This weekend he will show a selection of his paintings at The Hop Gallery in Lewes, alongside his daughter’s partner, a Spanish painter called Samuel Paradela, landscape artist Linda Partick and Chris Slack, who produces painterly photographic portraits.

When we visit, Armitage has yet to decide which works he will show.

“They’re never really finished you see. I think it was Edgar Degas who said that what you do when you’re working like this is have someone standing behind you with a Colt 45 and when it’s working well, they pull the trigger...”

* David Armitage is one of four artists exhibiting work in Four At The Hop, which opens at the Hop Gallery, Castle Ditch Lane, Lewes, today. Visit hopgallery.com.