"If there is a theme in this exhibition, it is the individual versus fate and destiny," says Chorlton-based artist Andy Leyland.

"Our lives are part of a larger pattern, but we also want to feel we can forge our own destiny."

It is a mighty subject which play itself out skilfully in Leyland's textured, impasto style works, picked up most directly in the darkness of a hubristic 'Oedipus' and in 'Agamemnon', where a skull-like mask emerges from a burnished, burning mass which could be glory or may be hell.

Artfully

An "anti war painting", it depicts artfully a man who though he had everything under control, but didn't.

Preoccupations with the body are explored in the very striking, compelling 'Metamorphosis', in the Egyptian inspired layers of 'Sleeper in the Sands' and up close up in the glowing black-red volcanic 'Scar.'

Elsewhere, two small landscapes describe in tones of grey and white what could never be bettered by a palette of colours, while a slightly different, geometric vision is employed best in 'Egyptian Statue', which merges planes and angles with the heady colours of textured, warm stone.

Leyland's works make for involving viewing.

Not only because the struggle of polarities played out in the paintings is central to us all, but because the artists' ideas, laid thick on canvas, offer a feeling of three dimensions and give life to powerful myths and situations whose significance struggles to escape the confines of the canvas.

Andy Leyland: Bodyscape Arison Gallery, To Nov 27

The full version of this article appears in City Life issue 558. Order a copy via the links below.