Look long enough at any of Ian Rayer-Smith's paintings and you begin to find company. A figure, a character, a presence, rarely announced and never quite named, but unmistakably there. These are abstract figures rather than human ones, alive without being literal, and their nature is welcoming. Once found, they tend to hold the door open.
Some sit at the centre of the work, others wait nearer its edges, but each one surfaces from the layers rather than being placed there by design. Ian does not set out to paint them. They arrive in the making, and the painting settles into shape around them.
That is the quiet character of the collection. A presence inhabits each work and offers a way in. Once you have noticed it, the painting is no longer something you stand before. It becomes something you are invited to enter.