Innocence of childhood broadens our perspective

Some artists are forthright painters. They are not performance artists, conceptual artists or installation artists. What they do is make images in paint. They are often not only colourful, but convey a delight in handling the medium.

One such is Philip Trusttum. He develops the everyday events around him into big colourful canvases where the energy comes from his immaculate sense of colour and the rhythmic patterns of his broad compositions.

In a new series of paintings in Parnell at the Warwick Henderson Gallery until October 16, Trusttum has been inspired by his grandson, William.

In the show Just William, the boy and his world are seen clearly with individuality and truth. Trusttum catches the inquiring innocence of childhood as well as the self-absorption and the uncomprehending, wide-eyed look at the world.

All the paintings have as their focus the blue eyes of the little boy. They also feature the bright red of toys harmonised with extraordinary greens and blues. The character of the child emerges and once Trusttum is well under way there is an exact sense of likeness.

The least successful painting is Ride III, where the little boy - in a shirt with stars - is riding a pedalcar. There are four legs in the painting to give a sense of movement as he leaps into his car. This is any child, young and vigorous.

By the time the artist is working on Mingi III there is a recognisable face that is echoed around the exhibition and involves the viewer in a personality. The character shares the painting with Mingi, a black dog who is equally full of life and personality.

It is not all sweetness and sentiment. In the remarkable canvas Will Ya II, the child is down at the left corner of the painting. There is a hint of green hills and, beyond the hills, a most extraordinary monster conjured up by his imagination. It is giant-sized, disconcerting but not totally menacing and an authentic image of the working of the child mind.

Most impressive of these fine paintings is 2 Tennis I where the boy, clutching two lemon-yellow tennis balls, is seen from above with the eye of an adult, while his eyes look at a world he struggles to understand.

Here, as elsewhere, the lines of the paint are decisive and are matched by the subtlety of the way the light on the child's face and forehead is softly brushed in.

In an era of irony, disillusion and attack, this exhibition is notable for its warmth and humanity as well as the masterly assurance in the paint.

Vivid colour is also prominent in the prodigal art of Robert McLeod, whose Talking About Art and Other Small Works is at the Edmiston Duke gallery until October 22.

McLeod is a spendthrift with shapes and painterly devices. Not for him the conventional rectangle. All his art is done on wood that has been cut into inventive, looping shapes pierced and spiked, always different but always recognisably McLeod.

His invention extends to one lively piece called Red Nude, where the elegant naked body has one foot on the floor, setting into agitation a whole set of writhing masculine forms. Scars, teeth, squeezing and discharge all contribute to the grotesquerie of the work. Mouths, eyes and even the soles of boots all run with curious liquids that are visual equivalents of speech.

It is all done with thick paint pushed around with the virtuosity that can model a realistic head on a plate like John the Baptist as well as a gross caricature as comic as Mickey Mouse or the complexity of the tartan that clothes the striding legs in City Life III.

There is always some sort of riotous dialogue going on in a Robert McLeod painting. The figures not only appear to be shouting at each other but the forms all echo, rhyme and chime around the composition, most notably in the works called Talking About Art.

There is a figure with a handlebar moustache which is easily read as a symbol of assertion. It could just as well be the artist himself. There are hills in the backgrounds, which is unusual for a painter who avoids landscape. Is he making a point about his work to the querulous figures in the foreground, such as the one literally talking balls? The work is full of savage wit and we can fully participate in the juicy dialogue.

Trusttum and McLeod make rich use of colour. But a younger painter, Thomas Elliott, whose work is at the Lane Gallery until October 8, paints in monochrome, although his work is of similar size and confidence. He creates a melancholy world where naked figures crowd together for comfort or take part in strange rituals.

This is Elliott's third such exhibition here and easily the strongest and most detailed. Against a dark background, the creatures - which owe a lot to Goya - are stacked in pyramidal groups where a collective mood is established.

In Nightfall, being in the crowd is comforting. In Horde it is hopeful. In Grasp it waits on steps and is full of anticipation. In Ups and Downs, which specifically quotes figures from Goya, the crowd is playing a curious, ambiguous game of support and peril.

It makes a memorable exhibition which needs only a little more hint of where these people stand to be totally effective.