TALENTED PAINTER

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30191, 24 July 1963, Page 21

TALENTED PAINTER

Shona Coivan’s Exhibition

The paintings of Shona Cowan are familiar from various exhibitions in the last few years, and her first solo exhibition, now at the Durham street art gallery, contains few surprises, although it is none the less interesting on that account. As well as paintings in oil and gouache, she is showing drawings, linocuts and etchings She handles” all these media well, with understanding of their inherent qualities and plenty of freedom and energy. In fact, energy, is. with colour, the dominant feature of this young painter’s work, and the two combine to create a sense of exhuberance, optimism and vitality. Miss Cowan is by no means a radical in style, for she works in figurative expressionist manner—her favourite themes are the figure and still life—but she appears to be following her own inclinations purposefully and she has a quite original sense of colour. The colours she uses cover most of the spectrum, but she puts them together so that there is a kind of tawny glow over all. The weak point of her work is composition and she often substitutes decorative effect for structural unity, as in the striped backgrounds to some ot the figure paintings. How-ever, she has genuine taletit and her exhibition—which will be her last before she leaves the country—is worth seeing, for talented young painters do not emerge very often here. The exhibition will close on Saturday. Prices range from one to four gns. for drawings and gouaches and from five to 30gns for oils. —J.N.K.