Whenever a new exhibition or project goes on show here, we work with the artist involved to choose an image that will stand for the show on this website. And because the virtual windows within websites have unusual and unbudgeable formats, we also have to crop the image and clear that crop with the artist.

So back at the start of last week I posted a teaser view of NDE, Peter Stichbury's work in progress for the Gallery's tenth-birthday Populate! programme, and asked the question: How is this easel painting, this thin skin of canvas with its fragile coating of acrylic, going to to muscle its way up to public art scale?

Our building may be closed – but we've have still achieved national recognition of by winning a prestigious Museums Aotearoa Award.

"What abstract painting can do better than anything else is [evoke] that sense of recognition that's indefinite yet ecstatic at the same time. It's getting to the emotional underpinning that we all share, that is the substitute for the common or religious belief. I believe abstraction can do that."

To the exquisite village of Duddington in Northamptonshire