Privacy

Two things, and nothing else. When you visit, Google Analytics records which pages you looked at and when, roughly where you were connecting from, and what kind of device and browser you used. It does this with two small cookies, named _ga and _ga_ followed by a code, which give your browser a random number so that a return visit counts as the same visitor rather than a new one. The number is not tied to your name, and I have no way of finding out who you are from it. Google works out the town from your internet address and then discards the address itself.

When you write to me, I receive your email address, your name if you give it, and whatever you tell me.

There is no account to make, no form to fill in and no newsletter. I do not buy information about anyone, and the server that sends you these pages keeps no record of who asked for them.

The analytics tell me which paintings people look at and where visitors come from, which helps me decide what to show and where to spend my time. In legal terms this is my legitimate interest in understanding how the site is used, and it goes no further than that: nothing is used to advertise to you, and Google is not permitted to use the data for its own purposes.

Your emails are used to reply to you and, if you buy or commission a painting, to see that through and to keep the records I am required to keep.

Google processes the analytics on my behalf and on my instructions, some of it on servers in the United States, under the arrangement between the United Kingdom and the United States that permits this — the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. Nobody else has access to anything about you, and nothing is sold or passed on.

Analytics data is kept for fourteen months and then deleted. The cookies themselves expire two years after your last visit, unless you clear them or switch analytics off below.

Emails are kept while we are in correspondence and for two years after, in case a conversation picks up again. The details of a sale are kept for six years, which is how long tax records have to be kept.

You can ask me what I hold about you, ask me to correct or delete it, or object to my using it. Write to the address above and I will reply within a month. If you are unhappy with how I have handled your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk, though I would be glad of the chance to put it right first.

If any of this changes, the change is made here and the date at the top moves with it.