Garry Currin is an impressive painter of intangible, evocative dreamscapes. The worlds he presents lie on that plane between the real and the imaginary; a world caught changing out of the corner of an eye, the world fleetingly noticed as we pass by in a vehicle. His deft use of a reduced, softened palette takes the scenes even further from the solid. It is as if he is painting with smoke. The images are of a possible world and a plausible world, but not necessarily one which has the definitive solidity of a real world.

Despite this aethereal tendency, Currin’s images have taken a turn towards the more realistic, albeit still in a J.M.W. Turneresque way (the 2017 work FIN, in  particular, has much the feel of the great master’s seascapes). There is land here, and boiling sea; waves crash against enigmatic shores under open skies. These works are not primarily about place, however - they are about the capturing of light and time at one place and at one moment. The play of light on the great rolling waves, the potential power of the deep and of storm clouds, and the urgent volcanic and seismic upheaval of the land are all to the fore in this essential snapshot of nature.

Most astonishing of the works is, perhaps, The Sea of Storms, a piece in which the artist abandons his usual muted colours to present the glowing magma of a land undergoing transformation by nature’s most violent forces. This work, and the others in the exhibition draw viewers in to the point where the irresistible power of nature overwhelms them.