This eagerly anticipated show had high expectations. Would Chris Dawson maintain last year’s brilliance of his Charman Prize-winning painting?

His solo exhibition in the Rick Faries Gallery comprises 18 oil paintings, mainly small- to medium-sized still life, and includes four portraits.

Dawson’s still-life paintings are like spotlit theatrical sets where taut dramas of light and shade play out on a stage of tonality.

They are highly executed as well as being an object lesson in the importance of tone over colour to the success of a painting — they would read equally well if printed in black and white.

Precarious is a balancing act. Signally inventive, it delivers a fascinating concept in an exquisitely glazed and textured painting. He creates a dialogue between volume, light and shade.

Shadows are lost and found — cast by the cherry dish on a precipice. Particularly inspired is the choice of a broken outer brick edge to create and carry a zigzagging shadow that is balanced by a luscious fallen cherry. It denotes a fine artist at his virtuosic best.

The artist seeks truth in his investigations and knows his palette: he makes the pigments himself. Because of its deliberate composition the fruit-cum-vegetable in Pomegronion subverts physics as it seemingly exerts enough downward force to conquer the solidity and density of a house brick underneath. He draws relationships and expresses fun, too.

His still-life paintings don’t always succeed.

For example, a painting of a lemon looks cumbersome both in its modelling and execution.

The arrangement of his motifs in Poised is awkward. These are distractions that don’t affect the integrity of a high-calibre exhibition.

For all his abundant technical ability and anatomical understanding demonstrable in these portraits, it is the artist’s unique vision that gives them the edge.

The varying tones and hues of the furrows and fissures of skin are explored in the stunning reading of his sitter, Mr B.

Subtraction and emphasis of facial features by the carefully observed fall of light create a realist painting that is instructive.

The portraits, like Dawson’s still-life paintings, have a strong compositional skill allied with a technical proficiency.

They are a pleasure to view. The artist explores light’s effect on surfaces through shadow and reflected light.

It is always fascinating to see an artist’s self-portrait. Chris Dawson’s image marks the triangular journey of light as it cuts across the shadowed half of a head cropped close to the hairline and strongly lit from an acute angle above.

His gaze is assertive, yet with a flash of vulnerability. The aqueous glaze of reflected light in the eyes is beautifully observed.

His striking portraits Mom and Granny are marked “NFS”, which of course is the unequivocal and correct way for a professional artist who wants to retain a cherished piece.

Chris Dawson lives up to expectation with paintings of substance. Painting the Light is a not-to-be-missed show of the year.

Painting the Light runs until April 13 at Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art