After twenty years in London a somewhat notorious artist returns home when his life falls apart as a result of fraud, death and depression. The Artist as an Old Man (Self-Portrait) is a personal hour-by-hour journal of the day of his first New Zealand exhibition. Accustomed to always being busy, the restless artist - eccentric, irritable and ageing - suddenly has nothing to do until the exhibition's evening opening. And so we follow him and his sometimes angry and unreasonable thoughts, including lingering doubts about his own work, through the long day. Having experienced financial relief before the exhibition, an unpleasant encounter at the exhibition, and sadness after it, he returns home at the end of the day ready to face his new life, alone and lonely, in Dunedin.