David Cobley's reputation as a portrait painter with several society commissions to his credit loses sight of the full breadth of his artistic achievement. Like many renowned portraitists of past and present (for exaple Sargent, Orpen, John or Lavery adn more recently Lucien Freud) Cobley paints with a deceptively easy virtuosity that transforms a straight portrait into a complex still life and interior composite.

While he paints under either artificial or natural light, Cobley always records from 'life'. This situation, far from condemning him to the role of tame copyist of that which lies before his eye, confirms the authenticity of a vision tied to the mysterious relationship between form and the surrounding space. The fall of light on the figure is also a deep concern, engaging the artist in a subtle and paintstaking reconstruction of the atmosphere unique in a room at a given time and place.

In the revealing context of the current exhibition Cobley's engagement with the figure - invariably a female nude lying or sitting on a bed stripped to cotton sheets - gives us a taste not only of the exquisite range of his graphic, tonal and painterly skills, but also of his sense that the landscape of the human form, like nature itself, is subject to infinitely subtle and variant changes of colour and mood.

Among the recent 'Sleeping Figure' or 'Bed' series are pictures that use a sharp aerial view, an almost direct downward gaze on to the reclining figure. Such perspectives are disorientating and call into question our spacial reading of the picture surface. In the anonymous oil sketches depicting his model's upright back, Cobley reminds us that this anonymous part of the anatomy - without the physiognomic features of the face - becomes an almost sculptural vehicle, modelling light through its delicate subtleties of surface.

As its title suggests 'Big Alchemy' cleverly yeilds a self-portrait whose introspective mood is suitable enhanced by the psychological metaphor of a dark, gloomy studio interior, at the back of which stands the diminished figure of the artist. In 'All By Myself', however, Cobley chooses an approach that is bright, colourful and face-on, eighty one small self-portraits parodying heroes of the past.