Because the owners of the new Meller Merceux Gallery have been inundated with customers since opening a couple of weeks ago — and still are — the pictures on show are continually changing. This means pictures mentioned here might have been sold before the article goes into print.

Owner Aidan Meller accepts that opening gallery at this time was a bold move, yet despite the recession, people are still buying original works of art. He believes that art-lovers are spending any spare money they have on beautifying their homes, rather than holidays.

At the moment oil paintings by Michael J. Ashcroft dominate the entrance. They are landscapes painted in oils on board, which capture light and dark, and are finished with an exceptionally high gloss. This courageous artist, who has been fighting a brain tumour, says that his art that has helped him through the continued treatment that he endures.

At the rear of the gallery you will notice a series of Andy Warhol prints, all signed by the artist. These include several Cambell’s soup prints, superman, and his famous Liz Taylor screen print set against a red backdrop. An unnamed and very sensuous pencil drawing, which dates back Warhol’s early days in the 1960s is also on show and for sale.

Because the works in the gallery have been selling so rapidly, Aidan is now hanging a series of exquisite oils by Rob Ritchie, whose miniature pictures of fresh fruit are so realistic you feel you could pluck the cherries from the canvas. Aidan has moved these pictures into the gallery earlier than planned to fill the spaces that absent Warhol prints have left.

As you enter the gallery. you will notice an untitled bronze and Marble sculpture, after the style of Henry Moore (pictured), which is said to have been created by the Russian sculptor Jozsef Szoke. This too demands and commands attention.