A brief encounter with Howard Brookes' oil paintings, with their startling clarity and sharpness might lead the casual observer to believe that they are enlarged photographs. Closer inspection reveals the refined drawing skills and brushwork that create the illusion. The perfection of his technique however, has never been an end in itself, but rather the means by which Howard Brookes succeeds in projecting a unique and highly personal vision.

As a latter-day romantic, Howard Brookes remains a singular, non-establishment figure on the contemporary art scene, yet many of his works have become so universally popular today that they are being described as classics of their own time.

The painter and composer Howard Brookes was born in New Brighton, near Liverpool on 15 May 1947. He was educated at Wallasey Grammar School and Wallasey College of Art. He studied Fine Art at Gloucestershire College of Art in Cheltenham, from where in 1969 he was awarded a travel prize to visit Sweden. He eventually settled there and lived for many years on the Island of Marstrand near Gothenburg.

A self-imposed exile under the pellucid Nordic light of the Isle of Marstrand enabled Brookes to distance himself from the brash influences of sixties pop-culture and develop a highly personal painting idiom. In the late seventies Brookes began working on a series of super-realistic oil paintings. These enigmatic works transcend the simple tricks of photo-realism by possessing a mystical quality reminiscent of Böcklin or Di Chirico, but with a special English brand of absurd humour.

During the eighties and nineties Howard Brookes travelled widely and found inspiration in locations such as the Californian coast, the Swiss Alps, the Mediterranean islands of Corsica, Samos and Stromboli, and most notably, in the remote mountain and desert regions of southern Arabia. Brookes intensified and sharpened his technique. The details were rendered even finer, his palette became more subtle.

During this time he began composing music. In contrast to the icy stillness of the paintings, Brookes music flows with an eloquent lyricism. Haunting melodies thread their way as soliloquies through fastidiously crafted structures. Although a penchant for sumptuous and colourful harmonies reveals indebtedness to Rakhmaninov, Barber and Poulenc, Brookes music is extremely original and oftentimes deeply moving. It radiates the same otherworldliness as his paintings.

At the turn of the century Howard Brookes put the final touches to his magnum opus, "The Secret Intelligence Service", ea collection of seventeen Études-tableaux, matching paintings to chamber compositions and original poems. A candid subtext describes the inspiration for each tableau, revealing several surprising aspects of the artist's somewhat reclusive life.

The suite culminates in "Sparky and the Darlings", a pocket symphony for twelve instruments, which is matched to the most intricate of all Brookes paintings and is probably his masterpiece. It depicts an Arcadian twilight filled with references to earlier works, both pictorial and musical. "Sparky and the Darlings" bears a dedication - " To friends and loved ones remembered within."

The complex sophistication of the "Secret Intelligence Service" suite, and the darkly poignant nostalgia implied by its content, led to a creative crisis, and Brookes felt compelled to change direction. The long love affair with his enchanted island was now at an end and after a stay of thirty years on Marstrand he moved to the city.

In this bustling new environment Howard Brookes entered an experimental phase by retracing his painting history back to the abstract-surrealism of the halcyon days at art school. Large, highly decorative canvases with dazzling psychedelic colours are vibrantly ecstatic, fragmentary and elusive - quite different to the melancholy introspection of his last super-realistic works. They bravely address the traumas of a troubled ag.e

Now several years on, Brookes has returned to familiar ground in a series of super-realistic canvases depicting his new home-base, Gothenburg. Meanwhile he has begun working on a volume of illustrated memoirs, with a publishing date due to coincide with the year of his sixtieth birthday.

Howard Brookes had his first major show at Galleri 1 in Gothenburg in 1975 and his first American showing at Angel International Fine Arts in Beverly Hills, California in 1984. In 1996 he received a commission from His Excellency Mohamed Zubair to paint images from Oman. Brookes is co-designer of the ferryboat Lasse-Maja.

Brookes is co-designer of the ferryboat Lasse-Maja. Howard Brookes lives in Gothenburg where he runs a gallery and studio on Tredje Långgatan.