THE basis of this exhibition his the major retrospective mounted at the Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast over a year ago, but a large section of that has since gone on tour to America, while other pictures have been drafted in some of them recent, and several unfamiliar. In any case, the exhibition as a whole is new to Dublin, although it did travel to Sligo.

Many of the paintings sent to America were early works, and there are fewer portraits than were shown in Belfast, so the overall balance has significantly altered. It is a mercy that Blackshaw in recent years has so often painted big (though his most recent work apparently is not on a large scale), which means that the slightly daunting space of the big first floor gallery has not swallowed him up. In general, the smaller works have been hung in the two inner rooms, a sensible arrangement and chronology has not been allowed to call the tune.

The recent pictures include a highly original one of a cow and calf, a banal description which cannot convey the fantasy and humour, the freedom of the handling and the imaginative elan of the original. Blackshaw has found a vein of imagery which glances off the Pop culture (without having any relation to 1960s Pop Art), combining a kind of poster like simplicity and casualness with a powerful, heraldic quality. It is at once naive and extremely sophisticated, and in works on a larger than average scale it makes for considerable carrying power. Dogs and horses, nudes, flowers and trees, become dominant, self contained images expressing the vision of a genuine visual poet.

Certain favourites are prominent, such as the two Angels and the intensely original picture of an old man walking his dog - which misleadingly appears as simplistic as graffiti, yet is at once humorous and deeply moving. Broad curving forms, an almost slapdash look which belies the decades of experience and skill behind it, an ability to say much with a single image and to make almost empty areas of the canvas "work" - these are some of the keynotes to Blackshaw's instantly recognisable style.

Always a fine artist whatever style he has used, inside the last decade he has made an imaginative and stylistic leap such as really good painters make with their "third period." The RHA Gallagher Gallery has made a powerful start to the New Year; it is almost impossible to visualise any Irish (or visiting) exhibition bettering this one in the 12 months ahead.