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IMAGINE Beardsley illustrating the Karma Sutra and you'll be prepared for the exhibition by St Ives-based Trevor Price being held in Badcock's Gallery, Newlyn.

Yet, while several of his 29 works, a mix of etchings and acrylic paintings on board, may be naughty they are nice.

Loving more than lustful, romantic rather than raunchy, often as funny as they are fanciful, they contain little you wouldn't mind "your servant" or your maiden aunt seeing.

An acclaimed artist/printmaker, born and bred in Redruth, Trevor studied printmaking at Falmouth and Winchester schools of art, and subsequently worked in London in an etching studio for a number of years; a valuable period that amounted almost to an apprenticeship and helped enormously in establishing him as a professional printmaker.

The recipient of several national printmaking awards, an active member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, and an invited selector on a number of occasions for the National Printmaking Exhibition held in the Mall Galleries, London, he has exhibited widely throughout the this country and abroad and his work now forms part of numerous collections from that of the Bank of England to Yale University, USA.

While, as he points out, "printmaking can be as simple as making some scratches on a piece of metal and inking those grooves and the burr they create, drypoint, or as difficult as making highly sophisticated multi-plate etchings.

"The variations and experimentation in printmaking can be endless. At the moment most of my figurative prints are drypoints of one form or another, usually on zinc or perspex.

"The images using perspex are made by drawing on the surface with a soldering iron, and then printing from those marks."

So much for technique, what he doesn't mention is his talent, his imagination and ability to fill his works, whether prints or paintings, with an irresistible sense of joie de vivre, of the stuff that dreams are made of, the fun and frolics, not to mention the follies and foibles that man and womankind alike are heir to.

One who is now in the happy position of sharing his time between St Ives and London, while the influence of the former place and of some of the artists who once worked there, such as Ben Nicholson and William Scott, can be detected in his compositions they remain absolutely his own work.

Fabulous and fruity, salty and surreal, from The Family and Man's Quest for Sex to those that owe quite a lot to St Ives such as Five Vessels and A Rose for My Rose, Trevor Price's new prints and paintings should not be missed.

Admission is free, and they can be seen in Badcock's Gallery, The Strand, Newlyn, 10am-5pm Monday-Friday and 11am-5pm Saturday, until October 6.

article copyright THE CORNISHMAN