This is Nick Moore's first one-man show for some six years. Since then his work has undergone something of a sea change. The Greek landscapes with their neo-Romantic overtones (much influenced by John Craxton) have given way to large and, in some cases, enormous still lifes of the very fruit which previously detailed his painting. Monumental pomegranates, figs and oranges emerge from bowls, float or appear suspended, their scale and the way they are painted making one think of planets and of moons in eclipse. The enormous scale presents a world magnified and in the case of the pomegranate, split open, a fruit no longer but some giant organism where microbes jostle and appear to move.

These paintings present a more focused artist. It is as though the heat of the Cretan landscapes which before had been rendered descriptively has now been translated into hot vermillions, scarlets and purples and applied full strength. There is nothing recessive about these works. The planes that the bowls sit on tip precariously up and their contents push out to confront the viewer. With these pictures Moore has moved from the general to the specific and in doing so has begun to explore the rich world of abstraction.

Interestingly, Moore did not train as a painter but studied zoology at Bristol. However before completing his degree he had already decided on a different career. His frequent trips to Greece, a country whose mythology and archaeology had been an interest from an early age, led him to move to Crete where he spent most of the 1980s learning the craft of painting. In fact, the only formal training Moore had were two short courses in etching.

As well as painting, this exhibition includes a powerful group of linocuts, a medium he experimented with after his last one-man show at Christopher Hull's in 1988. Moore returned initially to etching but found in lino-cutting an ideal printmaking medium to simplify form which he felt was becoming increasingly fussy. The discipline and constraints of the medium proved the necessary release and the results he has achieved are among his most successful to date. The combination of strong graphic shapes combined with areas of flat, textured colour has resulted in images of wry humour and great sensuality. The subjects are fisherman, grape harvesters, but with Moore's interest in mythology his subjects also perform on another level. Is this not Zeus sitting in his sarong and are these vast bowls some sort of offering to the gods? this exhibition of paintings and prints shows an artist who is finding his own vision, an artist who is enjoying exploring the potential in both the figurative and the abstract.

Nick Tite