If you have never come across the painter, colourist and storyteller Anna Pugh, we recommend that you try this gorgeous book. Not only is it packed to the edges with dazzling reproductions but the text, written by the artist herself, is an eye-opener into how the paintings were conceived and produced and there is an informative introduction by Angus Stewart detailing her life. Her style is idiosyncratic to say the least - best described, perhaps, as vividly representational but with just enough touches of the surreal to make the viewer want to look and look again. She records natural phenomena while invigorating them with persuasive allusions to something else intangible. Many of them are deliberately distorted but still entice the person viewing them to believe in their credibility. Her paintings do not just record the countryside, the flora and fauna and the changing seasons, they tempt the reader to think about what each section of the painting is really conveying. Here are simply two hens and two cocks amongst an abundance of lush grasses but why are there, hidden in a corner, a cross-looking bird and a white rabbit, not to mention a naked bush whose branches are a brilliant blue? Why, when most birds are facing a 'Bird Piper' figure, beaks open as if singing along with his flute, are there just one or two determinedly going the other way? Her work is magical, joyful and playful but also mysterious and imbued with the faintly ominous as if she were inciting us to think again about the meaning of life and death. Our favourite is Neighbourhood Watch in which all the village dogs are depicted, many of them floating above the clouds sporting tiny wings and the rest all bigger than the houses - presumably because they are more important! We love the laconic descriptions too, viz the caption to Holiday at Walberswick in which the author writes: 'Lovely sunny afternoons... doing nothing slowly.' 156 pages 29cm x 29cm in super bright colours plus the artist's reflections.