The Laura Bell Exhibition currently being held at the Rose Garden Gallery at the Masterworks Foundation, is unusual in that, while it appears to be an exhibition of abstract paintings, it is essentially about the real.

This observation points up the fact, that the distance between what we often think of as abstract and our concept of reality, is not as great as we might think.

It can be said that all paintings are to a degree abstract and that all abstracts are in varying degrees about reality.

In Laura Bell?s case, the source of her inspiration is a variety of gem stones, but while the original stones are small, she enlarges them in her paintings many times over. Additionally, her paintings are also about the art of painting.

Never would we mistake what she depicts as anything other than a painting, that is, something made of paint. We are conscious always that what we are seeing is paint applied to canvas.

At the same time we are also conscious that the initial inspiration is a gem stone. There is an oscillation in our minds between the real and the abstract, between the real and the material, that is, paint. It is as if we are mental jugglers holding all these disparate concepts in balance, all at the same time.

The exhibition consists of 20 paintings. The size of each painting varies from the smallest at nine by 12 inches to the largest which is 24 by 30 inches. All are painted with acrylic paint on canvas.

Although at the source of her inspiration are gem stones, in reality, the source at times is once removed from the original, in that Ms Bell occasionally makes use of photographs of gem stones.

This is an important point, for actually, these paintings are an example of photo-realism, or should I say, abstract photo-realism?

At other times she uses her own collection of gem stones as her source.

The exhibition ends tomorrow.