The Leith Gallery’s exhibition for October is a sentimental look at two very successful artists, Deborah Phillips and her late father, Douglas Phillips. Unusually for this gallery, the exhibition could be classified as parochial. As the title suggests the landscapes are mostly of Fife, with the beyond being only just beyond.

This father and daughter duo use quite different palettes and have different painting styles but there is a distinct similarity in the locations they choose to paint. Based in Dundee they found in the kingdom of Fife and surrounding areas many favourite spots, both in the countryside and the fishing villages for which Fife is well known.

Deborah has a more courageous attitude to colour and will happily use one colour in a painting to great effect. You can see this in “Green Mountain Glow” and “Turquoise Nightfall” especially. On other occasions she will surprise the viewer with her choices of strong colours , for example “Blueberry Sky”.

Douglas on the other hand had a more traditional approach to colour and he captured exquisitely the mood of the moment in so many of his works. For instance in “Snowy Flock“ you can almost smell the snow in the air and rain may have stopped for a while in “After the Rain, St Monans” but for how long one wonders? Douglas always managed to capture the magic of the skies above Fife and is “Seaward Burn” this is very evident.

Also in this exhibition is a solo exhibition of ceramics by Helen Foster. Helen works exclusively as a hand-builder, concentrating on slab-built forms. Bowls are constructed from three identical pieces which are laid over hump-moulds, then shaped to create space and movement. Other pieces are built from multiple slabs cut from templates of her own design, which are then carefully joined.