MALL, CHURCH STREET, HAMILTON.

*** Henry Ward is quickly gaining a reputation as a very talented painter, a reputation that is well justified if examples on display here are anything to go by.

Although born on the Island he was trained at the Chelsea School of Art and graduated from Goldsmiths College in London. The overseas experience has obviously broadened his horizons in a way that makes him stand out from more blinkered local artists.

This show can be split neatly down the middle. Six of the 15 canvases are large figure studies while the remainder are smaller oils depicting local scenes.

But, despite the two different subject matters there is something that links the two themes.

Stylistically Ward's figure paintings mirror some of the work of Lucien Freud and early Stanley Spencer portraits. Thick slabs of paint are applied to create a naturalistic, uncompromising, warts-and-all image, without any pretension to manipulate the sitter into a conventional form of beauty.

Two paintings, Mother and Painter , are good examples. The subjects themselves indicate Ward's delight in finding beauty in unusual sitters.

There is nothing fragile in the figures themselves which take on a solid, statuesque quality. Thickly textured paint is skillfully handled to give the impression these people have led full and hard lives and come through on top.

Yet Ward gives them more than a sheen of vulnerability by the way he places them in the space. Rather than being in the centre of the canvas they adopt a defensive pose off centre, as if they're trying to escape the artist's inquiring stare.

Surrounded by a vast wall of dark brown and black the figures become smaller, fragile and vulnerable, contrasting with their statuesque quality.

This juxtaposition of strength and weakness, portraying something as simultaneously both beautiful and unattractive, contradiction and contrast, is also evident in Ward's smaller landscape studies.

Rather than opting for the Carole Holding "lets-churn-out-pretty-seascapes-by-the-bucketload-for-the-tourists'' approach, Ward finds beauty in more sombre scenes and unusual angles in such paintings as Doorway, St.George and Winter Light I .

While still being obviously Bermudian in their atmosphere Ward doesn't flinch from the warts-and-all approach. In Old Rectory telegraph wires slash across the canvas casting shadows on the gravestones below. Your typical picture postcard scene it ain't but nevertheless Ward manages to point out the natural beauty of the scene.

This is an impressive collection of paintings, once again well presented by gallery owner Nick Lusher.

The show runs until Saturday, February 21.

GARETH FINIGHAN