Galway is in for a rare treat this month as the Bold Art Gallery will host an exhibition by Mark Kavanagh, aka Rasher, from Tuesday 27 November at 6pm.

Marks nickname 'Rasher' has stuck with him since he was a child. "I grew up on a council estate in Bray, and everybody had a nickname, same as anywhere. One summer, I must have been about five or six, I was sunburned on my back, I'd really blonde hair and I was really skinny, and my brother's friend said, "Jesus, he looks like a streaky rasher."

Apart from a yearlong PLC course, Rasher is a self-taught artist who has achieved commerciality. When he first thought of painting, Rasher says his father thought he was crazy and that he would never make a living out of it.

His principal subject has always been the human figure, often solitary, treated with a vivid directness that hints at his acknowledged masters, Caravaggio, Dali, Bacon, Hopper, but that, in the end, belongs to Rasher alone. His still lives are influenced by a trip to Italy and the old masters' works, which he saw on this trip. In Los Angeles he was heavily influenced by the bold and harsh light of his surroundings.

Rasher's new work has a strong thematic structure, shifting fluently from internal to external, semi-voyeuristic portraits of the lonely and room-bound, to boldly executed streetscapes and dramatic flower studies.

One of the most striking aspects of Rasher's developing talent is his ability to grasp the shifting uneasy nature of relationships and their evolution. Although his strongly modelled faces openly bear the burden of their histories, they also somehow affirm a desire to go on, as if lit from within by an unquenchable hunger and by the searching imagination of this most individual of young Irish artists.

The exhibition will run until Wednesday 5 December. For further information, phone 091-539900.

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