SOME artists spend their lives catching up with their opening line, living down a moment of fame or notoriety.

Margaret Harrison is such an artist but one who successfully responded to her sudden rise, not by pressing repeat but by meticulously uncovering and expanding on the motivation that brought that original spark to the surface.

Mima in Middlesbrough surveyed her impressive progress, beginning with Hugh Heffner as Bunny Girl from 1971, through the evocative and large scale Common Land/Greenham recreation sculptures to ambitious canvases like The Last Gaze from 2013.

What could be more intriguing than paintings made from water? The British Museum hosted Francis Towne’s 200-year-old bequest Watercolours of Rome, precise but visionary pictures, painted in part as a warning to town planners to value the beauty our predecessors achieved and to cast our eyes respectfully, not carelessly, on their aims.

For a painter who was refused election to The Royal Academy 11 times and spent many decades virtually forgotten they were at once impressive and humbling to witness.

Some of the year’s most thoughtful and hard-won paintings were shown by Celia Paul (self-portrait, pictured) at Victoria Miro’s gallery in London. Few painters are so occupied with and committed to literal and metaphysical truth as Paul and her work brings that of other great painters such as Peter Doig, Frank Auerbach and Michael Andrews to mind.

Her self-portraits are rock-solid reflections and the seascapes smell and shift like the sea itself.

My attention however was hostage to the small interior canvas Room Opposite the British Museum. Had this been the only painting in the room my 250-mile journey home would have been entirely worthwhile.

In October the late Russian film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky’s family sold a large collection of his polaroids at auction. Most remained unsold but the temporary display at Bonham’s represented a memorable insight.

Arranged in sets of 10, these tiny plastic notebook images carried echoes of his celluloid magic. A more appropriate setting for them might have been The Amber Collective in Newcastle who recently, and to much delight, reopened The Side gallery of documentary photography after an ambitious 18-month renovation.