Portrait of an artist: A flat in Chapeltown and an undiscovered treasure trove (VIDEO)

When I say that the walls of Ken Brown's home are covered in artwork, I mean the walls are covered in artwork.

Most of them are on canvas in hand-made frames, but many of them are on the actual walls.

"Sometimes I have paint but nothing to paint on," says Ken, laughing. "There are times when I have the canvas, but no paints." Materials or not, Ken Brown, 69, is an artist and his impulse to paint, draw, make, is undeniable.

"I used to have my bed down here," says Ken, pointing at the space in his front room where a huge wooden (hand made) bench now sits.

"I would have four or five paintings around the room and I'd be working on them. Sometimes the canvas has had enough and he tells me, 'you can't work on me no more today'. Then I start work on another." Putting the bed in the same room where he worked was a time saving arrangement.

"Sometimes I would go from the bed to the painting, to the bathroom, to the painting, to get some little thing to eat, to the painting."

Having everything around him in this one room meant no time was wasted. If he became too tired to continue working while standing at an easel, he would paint until he dropped.

Why bother struggling upstairs to bed once the canvas gave up on him for the day?

When he woke up, his paintings would be there, waiting for him to create on them once more.

"Back then I worked 20 hours a day." Is he an obsessive? He doesn't have to ponder the question too long.

"An obsessive. Yes, that's right."

These days Ken has moved his bed elsewhere in the flat and uses his sitting room to accommodate guests, his studio is now on the top floor of his Chapeltown home in Leeds. Sitting in the front room of the flat is a slightly overwhelming experience.

Ken is a character, but it is not just his warmth and friendliness that overwhelms, it is his artwork. It's alive and bright with colour and in a range of styles that seem almost schizophrenic – here are abstracts, there pencil drawings, in another corner still lifes, figuratives, even Jackson Pollock look-a-likes.

His home is a treasure trove of art."My life is art," says Ken.

As we walk through the house, upstairs in his studio he tells me that some people like to spend money on expensive meals, he spends money on materials. His soul, not his body, is the most important thing to feed. If he could only afford to buy either food or paint, which would he choose? He ponders for a long time.

"Well, the thing is without food, you wouldn't have the energy to paint." Discovering the work of this reclusive artist is extraordinary, to do so in Leeds suggests lightning can strike twice.

Another unknown who had shut himself off from the world called Joash Woodrow lived in Chapel Allerton no more than a couple of miles away from Ken's home.

He also painted incessantly all his life at his home and his work was only discovered following a fire.

Woodrow, a Polish Jew, struggled to cope with the outside world and had a nervous breakdown.

Jamaican-born Ken, who has an almost innocent exuberance, has had health difficulties through his life with an ulcer and diabetes, which went undiagnosed for some time.

"It meant I found it hard to keep a job."

Later he adds: "A job would keep me from my painting." Food, work, even, he later tells me, relationships, have all been sacrificed in the name of his art.

"They took away from my painting." Why has the world never heard of him? "The artist can do one thing – create. If you are busy trying to have exhibitions and concentrating on selling your work, when are you going to have time to make it?" he asks.

Growing up in Jamaica, he saw his father carving from wood. At school Ken dabbled in drawing, but thought it a form of art that was a "little feminine".

"I made things with wood – spinning tops, cricket bats, little men – for the other children in the village." He moved to England in the Sixties and lived in London where he met and fell in love with a woman, Cynthia. After an intense 18-month love affair, Cynthia left Ken and in a moment of heartache, art came to him.

"It rescued me. Art was my salvation."He had a single photograph of Cynthia, but when he lost this treasured possession, and the woman he loved, the only way he could see her again was to close his eyes. Or draw her. It was the first time since he was a boy that he drew – and he never stopped. He opens a box and shows me the pencil drawing of Cynthia. "I never got the nose quite right. But this is a good likeness."

Ken moved to Leeds 40 years ago where he met a woman who saw his drawings and encouraged him to apply to study at Jacob Kramer – now the Leeds College of Art. In his portfolio Ken submitted the pencil drawing of Cynthia, a self portrait painted with a couple of mirrors and an abstract which evokes the Jamaican village where he grew up. The college accepted him in 1983.

On graduation he secured a job at Chapeltown's Mandela centre, but "nobody wanted to pay me to paint". Unable (in truth not knowing how) to make a living as an artist, he slowly withdrew into his flat and simply started making his work. Over the years he has sold bits and pieces to friends in Chapeltown and "given plenty away – people take advantage when I'm drunk".

He moves through the crowded flat.

"These are my kitchen paintings," says Ken, leading us into the kitchen where he has laid out cheese, biscuits and wine.

The wall is covered in still lifes in stark contrast to many of the vibrant street scenes and abstracts all over the walls outside this room.

Why does he paint in such different styles? "The canvas tells me what it's going to be. I have a couple of little ideas when I sit down, but I don't know how the paint and the canvas wants to go until it is going on.

I'm never finished with a painting. I never give up on the canvas, it gives up on me. That's when I know I'm done."

Working in the bubble of his own home, Brown's influences are not taken from the wider artist community. For the past 15 years Ken has abandoned painting to a large extent and now his main artworks are chess pieces and chess boards.

He lifts the lid on the wooden bench in the front room of his flat to reveal a space filled with chess boards, each board and each chess set are hand carved.

"I still paint, but these have been my art for a long time now." Although undiscovered thus far by the wider artist community, Ken is well known in Chapeltown and he was introduced by a friend to Union 105, a new exhibition space in Chapeltown.

Its development manager, Tim Smith says, "When I first went into Ken's house I couldn't quite believe that every inch was taken up. The whole house is a testament to a lifetime dedicated to making art."

An exhibition of Ken's work, Art, chess and Life in Between, is at Union 105, Chapeltown Road, Leeds July 9-18.