Enter an enchanted world

Simon Keenleyside

Two gnarled trees silhouetted against a purple sky make for a typical, enchanted fairy tale garden with a sinister undertow in The Horrible Mysteries Of Ancient Landscapes. Elsewhere, dark, winding paths, bordered by clusters of richly coloured foliage, lead to possible danger.

But there's clearly a suburban sensibility informing the paintings of Simon Keenleyside, making you also think of carefully tended front lawns and well-behaved flower beds. It's a sensibility filtered through childhood memories of kids' TV in which trippy colours burst through a more mundane reality.

Keenleyside is no ordinary painter of nature, nor does he seem interested in merely depicting the fantastical; his imagery alludes to both the ordinary and the mythical, and there are clearly references to early Northern European landscapes too.

In A Despairing Night, which, contrary to its title, is a rather seductive and inviting view of a wooded lakeside, the foreground is made up of arcs and circles bursting with a brightly harmonious palette, while dark strips of land reach out into the glassy blackness of the lake. Built-up layers of paint produce an almost jewel-like effect. These are paintings of enormous visual appeal.