HAMILTON -- As I stood in the Masterworks Gallery waiting for Karen Kulyk to arrive I conjured up a picture of what she would be like.

Large, I imagined, as bold and brassy as her signature, a bit domineering perhaps, the life and soul of the party.

She would probably be wearing a multitude of brightly coloured clothes, a sixties hippy chick perhaps, a Mama Cass for the 90's.

In fact Karen Kulyk does not resemble the pen portrait at all, but the description -- bold, uninhibited, confident - does fit her paintings.

Walking into the Masterworks Gallery your senses are suddenly and violently assaulted. What hits you in the face without so much as a how do you do is Kulyk's strong use of colour which quite simply dazzles.

Like many artists working on the Island nature is Kulyk's influence, or rather starting point.

But she does not paint the great untamed outdoors but rather focuses on a more secluded, private corner of the world, typical in such paintings as Entrance to the Sunken Garden and The Hidden Garden: Waiting to Speak .

But the garden is only a starting point for Kulyk, a vehicle used to convey her enthusiasm for life. No gardener could possible hope to cultivate the dense, varied, colourful Gardens of Eden you see in Kulyk's paintings.

But Kulyk differs from other landscape painters in that she is not concerned solely with depicting nature.

Unusually she paints mainly in the studio, using drawings done on location only as a reference. These drawings are transformed through her imagination and enthusiasm into a celebration of life.

As Kulyk says: "I paint because I must. Painting for me is the breath of life and I try to interpret the forms and energy of life with as much passion and skill as I have at my creative command.'' The Impressionists insisted on never using black in their paintings and did most of their work outside.

Strangely enough, Kulyk never uses white -- something I didn't notice until she pointed it out to me.

The result is a totally undiluted view of the world. Blue skies sing, pink trunked trees dance and brilliantly yellow flowers throb. As one critic wrote: "Kulyk doesn't simply capture the colours of nature, she heightens them and if necessary invents them, imbuing her works with an intensified reality''.

Whether or not you enjoy looking at Kulyk's canvases there's no denying they're definitely alive. I walked out of the gallery with a spring in my step. Sometimes it's good to just stop and smell the colours.

-- Gareth Finighan ARTIST ART REVIEW ART REV ,