SUMMER sun and sunflowers summer exhibition and only in Ludlow The Silk Top Hat Gallery is delighted to be one of the founder members of the Only in Ludlow Loyalty card.

The bright yellow sunflower logo displayed in windows guide visitors to our local independent shops. Now you can pick up a loyalty card too and by spending just £1 in any participating shops get your first stamp. When you have twenty you can enter the prize draw.

Continuing our sunny theme, one of our new exhibits in our summer exhibition is Tamsin Bridge's 'Beautiful Sun' in her distinctive paintings enhanced with gold leaf.

Tamsin Bridge's delicately coloured watercolours depict her imaginative subjects entwined in sinuous tracery and occasionally overlaid with gold leaf. She says, 'I place a lot of importance on fine detail and colour in my work. Essentially, I am illustrating my responses to the stories of everyday. The stories are drawn together from dreams, deep reactions to perhaps simple every day events and other people, in a way that I don't fully understand myself. By painting I begin to understand and analyse these responses, to understand the stories. I find this immensely enjoyable. I try to stay true to myself and I think this is why, at times, someone may connect quite deeply with the work. This is fascinating for me and can, on occasion, create another tale!

'Most importantly, I endeavour to create a painting that gives me something of the feeling we occasionally encounter, especially as children: the feelings we may have when just waking from a dream, or, just catch the moon noticing the crows, jostling for a place in a tree, at dusk…'

She has a degree in Countryside Conservation from University of Wales, Aberystwyth and comments, 'I wanted to study something other than art. Whatever you do in life feeds back into your creativity. Learning about the natural history of a butterfly, or the feelings behind an expression on a face perhaps, fuels my imagination. These things add to the magic of life and hint at unwritten tales of my own to illustrate. The relationships and interconnections between science and art meet up in a kind of spiritual world of inspiration and creativity which can quite happily move into the world of faerie!'

Tamsin Bridge was born in Stratford on Avon in 1968. She spent many years living on the Welsh borders in Knighton and Ludlow, a short time in Kenya and has travelled in India and Europe. In 1985 she moved to New York and during this time she took life-drawing classes in Green Street and later at Cooper Union. When she came back to England in 1989 she completed an art foundation course at Shrewsbury.

Quality Square, Ludlow, Shropshire SY8 1AR 01584 875363.

The exhibition is open until September 3.