The late Bermudian artist Paul Doughty always said he wanted his sons, John Paul and James Doughty, to inherit his art.

The trouble was, after Mr Doughty died in January aged 71, James did not have the space for his share of the collection.

“I was left with a huge amount of his portfolio,” James said. “It was at least 30 pieces including watercolours, pastels, charcoals, wood sculptures and stone sculptures. It filled up a room.”

Instead of putting it all into storage, Mr Doughty’s family will be holding A Retrospective, Paul Doughty, an art show and auction at the Bermuda Society of Arts next week.

“I would love his work to live on in someone else’s house or space,” James said.

Proceeds from the auction will fund a grant to help an emerging artist hold a solo show at the BSoA.

“We might help them with materials, or the cost of the gallery space,” he said.

James said between the cost of renting space, buying art materials and framing and stretching, a solo show can cost into the thousands – a lot for someone just starting out.

There is also no guarantee of making the money back by selling the art work.

“It depends on the artist,” James said. “In today’s art market, things do not sell like they once did. There is a global recession. The last thing people are buying is art.”

He said back in the 1990s and early 2000s art sold much better in Bermuda.

“Corporate entities were buying art quite frequently. A lot of my father’s work was bought by the Bank of Butterfield and Swiss Re, and companies like that. He had commissions by them as well.”

James is hoping people will bid on his father’s work, since it is for a good cause.

“The show will be a full retrospective from the 1980s all the way up to the 2000s,” he said. “Some of it is on loan from family and friends and will not be for sale. Other pieces will be part of a silent auction.”

Mr Doughty was heavy influenced by postmodernists such as Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brâncuși.

“He looked at the human form and abstract elements within the human art form,” his son said. “So a lot of his art features human faces or human shapes. He put a lot of emotion into it as well.”

He thinks his father would have approved of the idea of supporting the next generation of artists.

“He loved giving advice to creatives,” James said. “He was always giving a helping hand to younger artists. He even taught at the Bermuda College at one point.”

Mr Doughty was a big influence on James’s life.

“I work in the creative space as a cinematographer and photographer for Burnt House Productions,” he said. “His explanations of colour theory and composition, subliminally, set me up for what I do now. My father was teaching me about the golden ratio and the rule of thirds, when I was a kid.”

Mr Doughty was pivotal in forming the Bermuda Arts Centre in Dockyard in the 1980s with others such as Emma Ingham, Charles Zuill and David Mitchell. He also curated some of the first exhibitions at the Bermuda National Gallery.

The artist started putting pieces in various art galleries from 1982 onward but did not have his first solo show until 1995 at BSoA.

When his children came along, he would often take them to art exhibitions.

He worked out of a studio in his back yard in Paget. James can still remember the smell of paint and the dust that coated the yard, either from wood work or stone sculpture, depending on the material of the day.

Mr Doughty graduated from the Parson’s School of Design in New York in 1981 with a bachelor’s in fine art and sculpture. Some of his sketchbooks from art school will be on display.

“I still have some of his still-life sketches from his first weeks of art school,” James said. “Those will be on display but not for sale.”

Outside of the art space, Mr Doughty was passionate about sailing. In 1975, he raced his father’s yacht Asteroid and regularly took part in the Newport to Bermuda and Marion Bermuda yacht races. He passed his interest on to others as a sailing instructor at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club.

“He also curated a lot of artwork there and did a lot of their archival work,” James said. “He was a big proponent of the art scene in Bermuda from the 1980s to the 2000s.”

While going through his father’s portfolio, James found several pieces that he did not know even existed.

“I had to take some of them out of their frames because the matting was mouldy,” he said. “On some of the pieces I found writing on the back.”

One of these was an abstract portrait of a winged Venus called Preparing for the Dance. A line on the inside explained it was inspired by watching James’s mother Christine, rush out the door in the morning, after getting the kids ready.

Mr Doughty’s last show was in 2005.

“He was planning to get back into the art scene,” James said. “Unfortunately, he fell ill and had ups and downs and arthritis. It put him off.”

• A Retrospective, Paul Doughty will open on November 15 at the Bermuda Society of Arts at City Hall, from 5pm to 7pm, and will run until December 10