Quite extra ordinary

Craigie Aitchison: Out of the Ordinary

Charming and whimsical seem to be words that naturally attach themselves to the paintings of Scottish artist Craigie Aitchison, which of course, can prove just as much an insult as a compliment.

Their apparent simplicity and naivety can appear a little forced at times and, occasionally, just plain silly, such as when he paints a childishly-drawn dead sparrow, with its twig legs pointing stiffly in the air. You can just see how some of these images would look great as greetings cards (in fact he has produced a Christmas Millennium stamp).

The small still lifes and the recurring image of Christ on the cross fare better than his portraits in this retrospective spanning five decades and featuring more than 60 works.

The latter are bland, and don't quite work as portraits - one's eye is almost instinctively drawn to the smaller detail and the often brilliantly coloured background; everywhere, in fact, but the face.

Nonetheless, Aitchison has got a lovely eye for rich, Mediterranean colours, though one does occasionally feel that, in terms of composition, some of the larger paintings are a bit of a mess - the huge Model And Dog, for instance, and the slightly sinister and quite baffling Uncle Tom Still Life.

Yet the religious paintings in particular possess a touching, quiet intensity, and there are one or two still lifes, such as Vase With Lily, in which a vibrant canary yellow clashes with a horizontal band of coal black, that make you pause just a little longer.