The eyes have it as canvases transformed

The eye to see and the skill to transform makes fine art, and three fine shows this week illuminate this interaction.

The work of Viky Garden at the Edmiston Gallery (until April 28) is the result of her fixing her eye on herself. Garden's self-portraits reveal a variety of moods and attitudes and achieve their remarkable presence by her unusual combination of expressive glance, baroque patterning and the audacity to be a little grotesque while preserving dignity.

The objects that Jude Rae focuses on when painting are much more still and solid. They can be seen at the Jensen Gallery in Upper Queen St (until the end of May). She paints plain jugs, beakers, vases and cylindrical bottles and transforms them by her perception and her technique.

What she sees when she looks at these objects are the subtleties of shifts of tone that convey their volume, the dim and delicate reflections on the surface they stand on, and the possibilities of arranging them in a satisfying composition on the surface.

One fascinating group of paintings deals with only four or five elements - a black block, a cream jug, a pale beaker, a yellow vase and a red bottle. One aspect of the transformation is a delicate sense of interval, the space between these still-life objects.

In SL 197, the beaker is shifted to the right of the other things and the gap between emphasises the space and the light. The gap is like a pause in music and variations on this silent interval give tension to the other paintings.

The intensity of the work comes from delicate layering of paint and in one work (SL 200) the brown edge of the surface leaves a hint of the layering process.

The boldest of all the paintings, SL 149, takes commonplace objects, fire extinguishers, and by exploiting their red body and their snake-like hoses confers on them a sense of monumentality and the energy of twisting line. It is a little symphony of red and black.

In the small gallery at Jensen is an exhibition of previous work that reminds us that Rae can confer this intensity on the human head as well as on a vase.

No people appear in the work of Emily Wolfe at the Anna Bibby Gallery (until May 6), although you are constantly aware of their presence nearby. The objects that her eye lights on and her skill records are curtains, windows and birdcages. Her skill in painting the translucence of a tulle curtain is remarkable.

Always, she leaves us aware of what lies beyond the window and the curtain. In her work the objects are pushed, ever so delicately, toward symbolism and the interaction between depiction and reality.

In this way a lovely work such as Aviary II has a congregation of singing birds among roses, but the birds are the pattern on the curtain. Beyond the curtain and the window is a dark hint of autumn and the whole gives the sense that the birds and roses have departed and just left a hint of their presence in the memory of the person who chose the fabric.

Wolfe hints that the world is far from perfect. Decoy I is a cage with a bird. In the cage is the usual swing and bells, but the bird is artificial. There are no seeds or droppings in the bird tray.

The sense of things being slightly awry extends to rips in the wallpaper and hints of damage of the skirting. Elsewhere is the hard, intrusive shape of a radiator.

All is not softness, sweetness and light. Contrasts are amid the delicacy. A wallpaper that hints at idyllic bliss, combining lotus pools with images of an arcaded villa in the Veneto is marred by a big tear.

The curtain that separates the person inside the room is a dream twice removed from reality but by this removal takes on much more emotional suggestion.

The show's limitation is the prevailing tone of grey. It suits the poetic melancholy to some extent, but taken altogether is just a little limp. Arpeggios of colour would add to the lyric effect.

The art of Kirsty Bruce that shares the Anna Bibby Gallery is an art of painted objects that make irregular patterns on the four walls. Some are rectangular, some are cutouts. All have a photographic realism and all depict the moods of women. The show is called La Femme.

Some work is on paper, some on canvas. The drawing is impeccable.

The style of clothing has a retro flavour but supports the variety of poses and moods.

These range from little figures in institutionalised clothing down near the skirting through various moods and fashions at a variety of levels, including women contemplating nature, their backs to the viewer, a wild close-up face high on the third wall, and finishing with a recumbent, sleeping figure on the fourth wall.

It makes a romantic, lively and appealing show in which the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.