Like a song or a smell, certain visual stimuli have the effect of pinging a person back to another era. Not like Dr Who or H G Wells might, but to a time they once knew: their childhood, youth, first date, parenthood.
Walking into Newlyn Art Gallery this month will undoubtedly have that effect on anyone who was around in West Penwith during the early 1970s.
A time of gloriously Bohemian excess and artistic originality, one of the many figures who helped shape the time was Roger Hilton.
Since his death in 1975, reams have been written about Hilton's motivation, his contribution, his family life, his innovation, his alcoholism. And while most are no doubt perfectly valid, it is the artist's celebration of life that is so overwhelming in the current centenary retrospective.
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Hilton, who served as a commando and suffered as a result of being a prisoner of war, was already a significant figure in the post-war modernist movement by the mid-1950s. A poster of his 1955 one-man show at the Symon Quinn Gallery in Huddersfield, hanging in the stairwell of the Newlyn show, is testament to this.
The 1950s were the days of Hilton's apprenticeship, when he was still digging a furrow along with other would-be giants of abstract expressionism. The days of his greatness were still to come.
Among the 65 oils, gouaches and drawings contained in Roger Hilton: A Centenary Celebration are works which span the whole period of his creativity, with the addition of sketchbooks, diaries and photographs.
The upper gallery, showing the likes of Savage Landscape from 1959, Boats from 1968, Little Belter from 1960 and Nude from 1967, presents a welcome, though fairly standard, look back at Hilton's early work.
However, it is the collection of smaller works downstairs, all completed during what must be regarded as Hilton's golden era, that hit the viewer between the eyes. These are pure Hiltonesque. Narratives containing figures, boats and especially animals, some were conceived from his bed in the final months of his life – and informed by a lifetime's experience.
What is remarkable, is here was a man wracked by alcoholism and in the clear knowledge that he wouldn't last long, wouldn't live to see his two young sons grow into men, wouldn't reap the benefits of his talents. Yet works like Love To Rose from 1973, Tears All Tears: My Wife Eaten By A Crocodile In Florida from 1972, Ladybird Ladybird from 1974 and Underworld from the same year, all appear to ooze optimism and a love of life.
Born in 1911, the son of a doctor, Hilton had two brothers, one of whom worked in the Foreign Office, while the other was diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. Hilton sought an entirely different path, studying at the Slade and rising to become what one critic described as "the most daring and inventive and successful painter of his generation in Europe".
The current overview at Newlyn is a personal selection by his widow Rose Hilton, chosen from private collections across Britain. It includes oil paintings, late gouaches and drawings, as well as previously unseen sketch books, photographs, letters and a 1974 sound recording of the artist.
The focus is on his work from the late 1950s, when he began to spend significant amounts of time in Cornwall. He first took a studio in St Ives, then one overlooking Newlyn harbour for three summers, before settling permanently in Botallack, near St Just, in 1965.
He was a regular exhibitor at Newlyn Art Gallery and even lived there for a while.
Rose Hilton said that although it was not possible to borrow works from public collections at short notice, the Newlyn show is an opportunity to view some rarely seen paintings, a number of which are on public display for the first time.
"I want to stress that this is not a retrospective, but a centenary celebration," she said. "We have depended on the generosity of private collectors to lend these paintings, drawings and gouaches that were produced during Roger's association with Cornwall and with Newlyn in particular."
A number of associated events are taking place at the gallery to mark the centenary. Roger's Birthday Evening is on March 23 from 8pm to 10pm, when Rose Hilton and friends of Roger host an informal evening of reminiscence and celebration. Roger Hilton Evening is on April 21 from 7.30pm to 10pm, when Timothy Bond will describe editing Night Letters and Ronnie Duncan will talk about his art collection and friendship with Hilton. Booking is essential.