Hi °C | Lo °C Unfortunately I missed Joanne Jamison's exhibition which has just finished in the Engine Room Gallery on the Newtownards Road, Belfast.
But from the look of the pieces sitting around — mostly sold but not collected yet — her work still focuses on landscape but with a very abstract approach.
Her most recent development is to move away from her fairly monochrome palette by introducing areas of colour, usually a rather vivid green, which gives her work quite a different feel, but in a good way.
On the walls at the moment, in an exhibition entitled Transcendental Moments: A New Exhibition of Beauty, are the latest works by Liam B de Frinse.
The works are based upon his belief that "between birth and death the lucky ones amongst us experience transcendental moments of sex and love" .
It is these moments in time that he tries to recapture and recreate.
To him the experiencing of 'transcendental moments' relies upon us having the key "to open doors of perception", and, luckily for the rest of us, his exhibition offers just that. His advice is to "use it wisely and your life will be greatly enhanced via wisdom and compassion".
It all sounds a bit pretentious, but actually I really liked the work.
Mostly inspired by the artist's experiences of Borneo, Phuket and Sardinia, the paintings are wonderfully colourful, very bold and, almost surprisingly, quite unpretentious in both colour and image.
I particularly liked the large works with bodies on a beach — for example in Ti Amo e Ti Odio — or the big, green, cacti and the whole beach bar feel of Bar Gelateria.
Most of the pieces are smaller, though, painted on thick blocks, where the images often cover the sides as well, then box-framed, which looks really good.
These smaller images, which at first seem almost like abstract areas of colour, on closer inspection have very clear and obvious sexual subjects.
Breasts and penises are everywhere, wearing a variety of vivid colours as very effective disguises.
Now I see the 'transcendental moments of sex and love' and better understand his poem The Loss of a Beautiful Boy.
Suddenly there is a sadness about the show, a feeling which I can't help taking away with me.
