Harrogate rail conductor's artistic skills lead to commission to do tactile painting for TV celebrity

Mirfin, whose new music video was released this week, was commissioned to do a painting for Scottish TV celebrity and business man Amar Latif.

Having experience 95% sight loss since his last teens because of an incurable eye condition called retinitis pigmentosa, Latif first rose to TV fame in 2005 Latif when he was a participant in the first series of the BBC Two documentary Beyond Boundaries, as one of a group of travellers with different disabilities on a trek from the Atlantic to the Pacific coasts of Nicaragua.

Since then, this hugely positive figure has appeared regularly on our TV screens in BBC travel shows and, in 2020, was the first-ever blind contestant on Celebrity Masterchef.

Paul Mirfin explained: “I was asked to paint a textured oil painting so that Amar Latif could feel it and I described it as he touched and felt it.

"We had a really nice time chatting about the artwork and I described it as he felt the canvas and paint.

"I decided to paint the hotel Ambos Mundos in Havana in Cuba,which is somewhere Amar likes to stay and where Ernest Hemingway stayed regularly.

"He said afterwards that he loved the painting, which was fantastic.”

The quietly-spoken Mirfin’s artistic side may have been in the spotlight recently but he has not neglected his music.

Formed in Knaresborough in 2015, the semi-acoustic folk rock outfit The Paul Mirfin Band first gained a nationwide profile when it performed on appearing on BBC TV's Songs of Praise.

The band’s latest stunning music video is for new track Devil's Displeasure and features Pierpaolo Cosentino, a Sicilian at Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance.

Paul Mirfin said: “Devil's Displeasure is based loosely on the blues folklore story of Robert Johnson who sold his soul to the devil on the crossroads.”