Elizabeth Haines's new show at Art Matters Gallery in Tenby, from tomorrow (Saturday) to Friday, September 30, gives a fascinating overview of the artist's development over the 35 years that she has lived and worked in Pembrokeshire.

Most of the exhibition is of recent work, and of the 40 paintings on show many have a French influence, since the artist's family now have a house in the Charente. There are also a considerable number of drawings and paintings from earlier years for sale, which will also enable viewers to trace the sources of both her thinking and her use of different media.

These examples include very early watercolours, drawings and illustrations from the '70s and '80s, with which most viewers will be familiar. There are also some examples of the work incorporating Welsh poetry, which came in the wake of her residency at the National Eisteddfod in 1987, and some of the more abstract work relating to music in the 1990s, for which she received an Arts Council Bursary. The poetry and music research formed the basis for her PhD in the Philosophy of the Arts, completed in 2001.

All this work was a factor in the evolution of Elizabeth's painting. Her work, as she absorbed the lessons of other art forms and made a deeper study of European painting, has become more abstract and less tied to the detailed representation demanded by her earlier work as an illustrator. The newer paintings are characterised by a greater richness in texture and colour, evolved by experimenting with various mixed media, which gives the pictures a depth and resonance. She says: "I start a studio painting by making apparently random marks, or reworking an old image, and then allow the subject to evolve.

Gradually there becomes a point where the 'music' of shape and colour take on the appearance of something I once saw or experienced, perhaps forgotten until that moment, and I work on this until it feels right. Some paintings remain on the edge of abstraction, allowing viewers their own interpretation, and some become more representational. Alongside this I continue to renew my store of images, and explore the nature of the visible world, by drawing and painting from life. I never go anywhere without a sketchbook." In their review of the exhibition, David and Meredith White suggest that Elizabeth's paintings set up a dialogue with her audience, by allowing enigmatic landscapes, for example, or vulnerable crafts sheltered in safe harbours, to become metaphors for the complex world in which we all live. She says that by using 'peripheral vision, as one seeks to see an object in a dimly lit room by not looking directly at it, the full metaphoric nature of Haines's work establishes itself in the viewer's mind'.

The exhibition opens at Art Matters Gallery in South Parade, Tenby, tomorrow and continues until Friday, September 30. Admission is free and everyone is welcome.

Elizabeth will be in conversation with Derek Shiel (artist and author of books about Welsh artists David Jones and Arthur Giardelli) about the development of her work over the past 35 years on Saturday, September 17, at 7.30 pm. This event forms part of Tenby Arts Festival and tickets at £3 are obtainable from the gallery by telephone: 01834 843375.