Works by Emma Ingham-Dounouk at the Lighthouse Tea Room

I have been so used to seeing the spare, elegant figure drawings of Emma Ingham-Dounouk (hereafter Ingham, as she is more widely known) that to arrive at the Lighthouse Tea Room Gallery for her solo show and find not a single figure in the entire show was almost unnerving. What I found, however, was far from disappointing.

The gallery is dominated by Ms Ingham's botanicals. This suggests rather exacting and precise renditions of plant life of the kind designed for academic horticultural tomes. Hers are refreshingly different.

To start with they are done in an unusual medium, watercolour pencil. I found I was not out of line in thinking these to be something most often given to children so they could try at watercolours without actually making too much of a mess. Ms Ingham uses them with the style and grace one might expect and achieves a mildly textured effect that removes them from the field of the meticulously rendered academic work.

To go on with, the artist doesn't confine herself to conventional full frontal leaves and flowers, but contrives interesting compositions by using oblique angles and off centre compositions to achieve interesting and refreshing effects.

Finally her subjects are presented "warts and all". Burnt edges and tangled fronds are all included giving the works a vibrant, alive feeling in happy contrast to the rather cool, distancing effect of the truly academic botanical.

Her large leafed plants were more effective than her nasturtiums and I was most taken by 'Locust and Wild Honey' where the complex leaves were tangled, perhaps after wind, thus achieving a solidity of composition unusual in botanicals. Of the two Elephant Ear works, one was done from a horizontal point of view looking across the leaves, again achieving an unusual compositional effect. The interest of the compositions was reinforced by the rich variation and subtlety of the colours imparted to what at first sight are merely green leaves.

The warts and all approach also found its way into two small watercolours of palms, both uncompromisingly weather beaten and thus entirely comfortable and charming. So too was the ink and watercolour wash 'Studio View' of the corner of a St. George's house partially obscured by an absolutely delightful paw-paw, clearly suffering from one of the summer?s droughts. Sad, brown, crumpled leaves mingle with newer, fresher ones to great effect.

St. George's architectural scenes in ink and watercolour wash make up much of the rest of the show. Ms Ingham's apparently rapidly executed ink sketches are distinguished by an exacting attention to form and perspective.

This makes them both comfortably informal and impressionistic in style while remaining solidly based in excellent technique. Anyone who thinks that because a painting or drawing is an impression of an architectural subject the rules of perspective become less relevant should go to the Lighthouse and see just how important they actually are. These delightfully relaxed sketches are solidly based in a technique honed through years of experience.

If I had a reservation about any of them it was that some of Ms Ingham's pinks made me wince. One she entitles 'Very Pink'. Another, 'Old Walls' might have been called 'Even Pinker'.

Last, but perhaps not least despite their diminutive size, are Ms Ingham's chicken sketches in ink with only the combs coloured for punctuation. I was made to understand that I must be the only person on the Island who hadn't seen her chicken sketches, but to me they were new. I regard chickens as very stupid and entirely boring birds until eventually raised to a point of serious interest after being treated by a culinary artist. Ms Ingham, however, endows them with extraordinary character and charm. If you are amongst the unlucky few who have never seen one, by all means go to the Lighthouse for lunch.