In 1947 Strevens was commissioned to execute a series of murals, The Four Seasons, for a large public hall in Kingston-upon-Thames. The four huge panels of seasonal flowers and a 17ft wide central panel were heralded as “a forerunner of the advertising of the future – the straightforward commissioning of fine art by industry for the benefit of the public” (Art and Design Bulletin, January 1949).

His family, and his immediate surroundings were a constant source of inspiration from small sketches of plants in the conservatory, to large interior and garden scenes.  His second wife Julia cultivated the garden and conservatory in Loughton, and gifted as she was at many domestic crafts from cookery to patchwork, she supplied a feast of pattern and colour in their home.  Walks in nearby Epping Forest with its changing colours and the apple trees in his garden prompted other visions which he recorded back in the studio. Apple trees he particularly loved.  As a sickly east London child he had been sent to stay with an aunt in Dorset to recuperate from illness and saw an apple tree for the first time.  It was a vision he said, of what true wealth really was.

Strevens’ discovery in the 1950s when he travelled to France and Spain of the French Nabis, the painters of interiors like Bonnard and Vuillard and lesser-known followers like Leguelt, and also of the Spanish painter of sunlight, Joaquim Sorolla, inspired him to play more freely with light and colour.  Like them, he would often use figures painted from memory or sketches, absorbed as he put it in a symphony of colour. These were some of the paintings he preferred to keep in his own home, hanging a flood of sunlight and colour on the walls.