Max Ayres has spent much of his life capturing Lancashire – and himself – without ever selling a painting. Now a blaze has transformed much of his singular body of work

Max Ayres has a hole in his head. Well, his self-portrait does. He’d like to fix it, but there’s a great big gash in the canvas. As he steps into his living room, the corner of the ceiling droops down in a great triangle. The walls around him are black. He faces another self-portrait where flames have stripped away his entire body. Each wall of his modest council flat is covered with paintings – self-portraits, still lifes, some stored, some hung. Ayres has more than 1,000 in total – and most are now burnt.

“I don’t like to say the phrase ‘got on like a house on fire’ any more,” he tells me. He was relocated in February after his flat caught fire while he was in hospital, yet in late September with the threat of autumn looming, he’s still there. “This is supposed to be temporary,” he says, as he shows me around, “but it’s not temporary enough. It’s an insult to buildings.”