Sam Dillemans is an unusual painter to find in the contemporary Belgian context. A convinced figurative painter in the painterly, expressionist mould like certain painters from the school of London such as Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff, he demonstrates his strong commitment to painting as a material practice by emphasising paint as stuff and as mark. Mostly Dillemans works from the motif- sometimes from photographs - but always his concern is the same, namely to represent his chosen subject and his own subjective responses to it, and to do so truthfully. Like most of today's painters working with expressionism, his paintings achieve a powerful feeling of immediacy. Paradoxically, it is the outcome of a lengthy and distinctive painting procedure...