SUMMER EXHIBITION (Upper Deck Gallery in Plettenberg Bay until March 2010).

FOUR artists, Raymond Andrews, Lynette ten Krooden, Ian Hertslet and Bruce Backhouse have contributed 21 paintings to this exhibition which perfectly captures the feeling of summer. The four have greatly contrasting styles when it comes to setting down paint on to surfaces, but this only adds to the overall quality of the exhibition. Andrews works with paint on woodcut, a technique that must be incredibly difficult, but which produces a wonderful finish. His Reflections II is a still life of several apples that for sheer force of line, colour, character and composition is a painting of the highest order.

Andrews is a most gifted artist and he has three other large works, African Tapestry, Triumph and Defeat, and Dream Machine, hanging at the exhibition.

Each work must have required many hours of concentrated work.

Ten Krooden has four paintings on display with titles such as Diva With Lilies, Lady With Orchids and Cherry Blossom Lady.

All are in mixed media on canvas and all are lovely renditions of the female form in flowing evening gowns of reds and pinks.

Very different, but very well executed in a style that is all her own.

Backhouse, who has had work displayed at The Upper Deck Gallery before, returns with some delightful observations of the summer scene in Plettenberg Bay.

In Yachts Off Plett, in oil on canvas, the antics of the peak holiday season are depicted in bold satire.

A flurry of yachts race across the bay, holiday makers paddle and swim in the surf and in the foreground two business acquaintances talk about property on the Garden Route, golf and where the best restaurants are, all the while wishing they were back in the corporate boardroom.

Another fine work by Backhouse is titled Dancers at The Great Camdeboo Ball that also carries many a message.

The paintings of Backhouse are not dissimilar to the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – they are beautiful in their own right, but beneath the story line there is huge sub-text of innuendo and irony being played out throughout the course of the action.

Hertslet has some magnificent work on display at this exhibition – there are seven works in all from this highly original artist.

A Letter From Her Love has fine contrast and looks much like a Paul Cezanne.

A Floral Study is painted with strong lines and bold colours.

Most arresting of all is a large canvas at 2m by 1,2m titled A Certain Kind of Magic.

The viewer looks through an open window at an adjacent cottage, to a lake and mountains beyond.

There is a palm tree painted in dark outline and powerful use of chiaroscuro in and around the structure of the cottage, but where are we, what time of the day is it and what exactly is going on in this painting?

No matter, it is a most splendid application of oil on to canvas and one is reminded of the title of one of Paul Gaugin’s great paintings, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

Perhaps it is no coincidence that this painting was mentioned by name, at the opening of the exhibition, by Arne Meyer.

The exhibition is a must for all art lovers and everyone else too, come to think of it. – Reviewed by Timothy Twidle