15 FEBRUARY 1997, Page 40

Hughie O'Donoghue (born Manchester 1953) paints on a grand dramatic

scale. Pas- sionately elemental images of landscape and the figure dominate, resonantly personal (`Being Here III', 1996, above). Moody, expressive, lushly but exactly painted, his new pictures are showing at Purdy Hicks Gallery, Bankside, SE1, until I March. Already successful in Scandinavia and Italy, O'Donoghue now has three concurrent exhibitions in Germany: a museum show in Munich, and commercial shows in Munich and Frank- furt. In the face of so much artistic and emotional minimalism in England, O'Donoghue

goes for the broader gesture, and the wider humanistic sweep. Andrew Lambirth