Shara Hughes (*1981) is a landscape painter. Her dense paintings however do not show a view from a window across a wide field or up to impressive mountain tops. Her steep coasts, river courses, sunsets and abundant gardens play with remembered landscapes of the kind that we all can recall.

Shara Hughes always starts with a white canvas but with no clear idea: the artist develops her picture using oil paint, brush, spatula and spray and in doing so she celebrates painting itself. Her range of colours is exuberant, as are her subjects. Though always figurative overall, individual abstract gestural sections on the canvas alternate with constructive sections or with ones that recall watercolours. Her painting is as extravagant as it is masterful. When she cites art history, then only to advance the inventions of earlier masters for the purposes of her own oeuvre. Who claimed that painting was dead? Here it is definitely alive and well, boisterous and contemporary. On viewing Shara Hughes’ works a delightful dizziness immediately ensues.