In his own Words: John Kirby on The Living and the Dead at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool

In his own Words: Artist John Kirby tries to pick his favourite work from The Living and the Dead, the major current exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool...

"Asking an artist to name a favourite painting is like asking a mother which is her most loved child.

Should it be little 'a', with her bandy legs and permanently runny nose, or 'b', who is bossy and cheeky and will probably come to a sticky end?

To see so many paintings I've not seen for so long is both embarrassing and revealing of the narrowness of my interests and obsessions.

I also note how my ambition has waned over the years, but I'm glad to see that the sculpture holds its own. I thought it might seem slight and rather lost.

If, god forbid, the Walker Art Gallery was to burn down with me in it, what would I save? Something small and portable, probably.

Lost Child, the little boy or girl in its pink dress with pearl buttons, was done when I lived in Brighton and didn't have a studio space. It was painted in my small kitchen.

It shows the influence of religious painting on my work and the ambiguity of sex and gender. It’s an attempt to paint the soul, my soul, in fact or how I feel it should be.

Ask me tomorrow, though, and I’d choose something else."

• The Living and the Dead: Paintings and Sculpture by John Kirby runs until April 15 2012. Read our Curator's Choice from the show with Head of Fine Art Ann Bukantas.

More pictures from the show: