Portraits of life’s fleeting nature

I first came across the work of Joyce Gunn Cairns about 25 years ago. She was an unknown painter and after reviewing her work, by singling it out in a large group show, I received a letter of thanks. The handwriting was fragmented and full of energy while the content was frank and heartfelt. Cairns’s imagery was, at that time, centred on the self and I recognised a degree of torment and agony running through her figurative and expressive style.

Quite a lot has changed since then, although her style is still recognisably her own: delicate, skin thin, almost translucent mark-making on what is usually a pale ground. The human figure remains central but has been joined by other forms, mainly creatures with whom we share our lives: birds, mice, dogs, cats. There are self-portraits and portraits of relatives such as her late mother, holding a baby with a ginger cat curled up beside her.

Cairns’s work has mellowed but in doing so may have lost some of its edge. There is room for softer voices in art but the qualities that were so disconcertingly resonant in her early work would be good to uncover again.

Until recently Henry Jabbour was a senior medical scientist but after much soul-searching he abandoned his career and turned to art in 2010. He hasn’t looked back. First and foremost his work is painterly, meaning that it draws attention to the processes of its making. In Jabbour’s hands paint is abundant and vibrant, full of passion, colour and texture; it is applied generously and evidence of the work’s progress is in plain view.

His subjects are people and their relationships, either to each other or to the artist. The images are tender and full of emotional maturity. Each is carefully considered and composed; they look outward to the world and inward to the artist’s humanity. They celebrate life and implicitly value its impermanence, conscious of their ability to endure beyond the lifetime of Jabbour and those that inhabit his works.

Taken together the work of these gifted, complementary artists shows how talent, hard work and passion can combine to create testaments to love and humanity.

Until November 24