FOR some time, Tony O'Malley has been engaged in a painterly dialogue with the pond in his garden near Callan, in Kilkenny. Inevitably, parallels will be drawn with Monet and his lily laden pool at Giverny. There are few real similarities in treatment or style, however, and perhaps more fruitful comparisons but he made with Sean McSweeney's much painted bog pools, or Nancy Wynne Jones's recent, and impressive, series on the pond in her garden.

The truth is, however, that O'Malley appears to have no more in common stylistically with these two respected artists than he has with Monet. He does not even seem to be especially concerned with the properties of water per se, whereas Monet was obsessed with them.

He uses his small stretch of water for a series of reveries which produces paintings that are sometimes sunk in stillness and in other cases are flecked and curved and full of movement. You might even say that the pictures are about the seasons more than the water, and that he uses it mainly as a mirror to them. But even within in the same season he finds strong contrasts for instance, Pond in Winter almost reminds you of his Bahamian pictures, while Night Pond is a deeply meditative nocturne.

Other works reflect his periodic visits to the Canaries, where he chooses rocky, volcanic isles such as Lanzarote rather than the obvious and colourful appeal of the bet, for known ones. And there is one of his typical Good Friday pictures dating from 1994 composed largely of irregular overlapping bands of colour, but closer to his earlier work.

In certain pictures, I found that the gritty surfaces though they had been sprinkled with sand rather came between me and the depth of the colour. I also still prefer his, paintings on wood to those on, canvas, which somehow are less idiomatically his own. That, however, is a minor issue compared with the imaginative freedom and visionary depth of a senior painter, who seems to distil more and more from nature and from his own inner self.