IT'S sadly not often in this world that, whilst enjoying a much needed shampoo and set, you're able to meditate on the really meaningful gubbins of everyday life: sex, death, the whole human condition in fact.

But that's exactly what you can do at the Arison Gallery in Chorlton if you crane your neck slightly from the hairdresser's back room to catch the latest exhibition from Manchester based artist, Andy Leyland.

Using richly textured oils, Leyland is preoccupied with the human form and many of his canvases are slightly ambiguous figures, at times ghostly, at times much more sculptural but always with a brooding quality.

Many of these figures are anonymous or lost or weighted down with religious symbolism. Somehow, you cannot imagine the artist skipping merrily to work in the morning and it comes as no surprise that Leyland cites such painters as Bacon, Auerbach and the German Expressionists as his predominant influences.

It also comes as no surprise to find the artist himself is an embittered soul subsisting in a studio flat so squalid as to be worthy of Quentin Crisp.

However, Leyland has not limited himself to sombre shadowy works. Half of the exhibition comes from a much warmer palette with pieces such as 'Sun Dancer' being almost playful and the centre-piece canvas, 'Meeting on the Road to Emmaus' positively sun-baked. He has produced an exhibition of consistently high standard which, frankly, is a miracle considering the chain-smoking artist has set fire to his flat three times in recent months.

Highly recommended (the exhibition that is… not arson).

Andy Leyland is at Arison Gallery, Chorlton until Saturday, November 30.

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