Julian Paltenghi

Julian Paltenghi's still-life oils could be seen as narrative opera or ballet scenic designs rather than images from a table'…

Julian Paltenghi's still-life oils could be seen as narrative opera or ballet scenic designs rather than images from a table's top. Two richly coloured pears for instance are poised stage left, stage right, upon a Cinemascopically dimensioned, otherwise empty yellow foreground set against a background dark as Hades, or rich as bishop's purple. The painter proffers a stage designer's shorthand for those whom the fates have thrown apart.

Even Paltenghi's flower-paintings, his fading cornflowers in a vase, are imbued with a melancholia of drama which must point too to an act of personal exorcism where the ghosts of their now vanished, vanquished blues hang around the altar-piece vessel, wraiths of incense from a ceremony not quite forgotten.

Runs until October 2nd.