An island-based painter has put his life’s work on display on the walls of a Laxey art gallery.

Tony Hewson recently opened his first solo exhibition, entitled ’It’s All in the Detail’, at the Hodgson Loom Gallery, at the Laxey Woollen Mills.

Revelling in finely captured landscapes, still-life and Celtic knot work, the exhibition covers the time-span of Tony’s forays into the art world.

Altogether there are 90 different original paintings in the collection, and they range from Tony’s first paintings, through to several completed and on-going projects he has undertaken, one of which is to paint each of the Scottish Munro hills.

Tony, a retired English teacher, admits that he is just a hobby painter, and that he has always painted for the pleasure of it.

’I have painted all my life, on-and-off, but I suppose I have got more into it recently and, over the past 30 years, my standard has improved.

’I have lots of landscapes of places like the Lake District, where I do a lot of walking and climbing, and I have also painted about 70 of the of the 280-odd munros.

’I want to paint all of them, but I’ll probably be dead before that happens though.’

’I also have some of these paintings, which I can’t really describe, so I just call them "fairly-weird things", which are a random collection of still life’s and paintings of close up details.

’If I haven’t anything else to paint, I often go and paint stones, brick walls and rocks, mainly because I just love the texture of them.

’In a way, the whole exhibition is about texture and detail.

’It is the same with my Celtic knotwork pieces.

’I have painted these, along with a triptych of Archibald Knox silverware which really shows the fine lines of his work.

’But basically these pictures show my whole progression through painting.’

His own favourite pictures are four of his most recent, a combination of pictures which depict earth, wind, fire and water.

He has also created a series of portraits of musicians, who he sometimes plays folk music with in Pub sessions.’

Hidden amongst the landscapes and still-life paintings are two portraits of figures taken from a Manx history book.

’These were among the first pictures of people I ever painted.

’I picked the faces out of a book of Manx photographs, and I have said that if anyone can name them, they are welcome to have the pictures.’

’It’s All in the Detail’ is open until Thursday, September 26