QUITE FRANKLY. Brian Bourke's last two exhibitions seemed to me the work of a painter who was marking time rather than going anywhere in particular. Not that they were bad, but they had a repetitive quality and appeared to have sacrificed the rather turbid power of his earlier work for a relatively conventional landscape sensibility. His present show, by contrast, recaptures much of the energy and rawness he appeared to have lost, in short the indispensable quality of "guts".

A large section of the paintings and drawings was apparently stimulated by a recent visit to Andalucia, where the high colours of the landscape, the torrid light and equally emphatic shadows were ready-made for Bourke's style and mentality. Reddish-yellow earth, gnarled olive trees and hectically blue skies all crowd into pictures which are swept by powerful rhythms and strong colour contrasts. In painting these, Bourke seems to be recalling the Provencal pictures of Van Gogh, an artist who surely influenced him in his early years.

Rock and Road, Connemara is a quadriptych (i.e. four joined paintings) in which the rock itself resembles a huge clenched fist and makes a potent visual image. Another West of Ireland landscape includes Gericault's "startled horse" from the National Gallery - which could have been a strained conceit, yet it holds together with a sense of emotional friction.

Upstairs there is a cross-section of Bourke's work from previous decades, including various nudes and figure subjects. They show some influence from Francis Bacon - almost inescapable at the time, when so many painters were recoiling from abstraction - but the moody, slightly claustrophobic tonalities are very much Bourke's own. Of the group which became identified with the Independent Artists, he is/was certainly one of the strongest personalities.