Yellowknife (May 09/03) - It is notable that Graeme Shaw, a painter currently in a tropical frame of mind and in love with bright colours, avoided descending into tackiness on his canvas.

Shaw, 52, is familiar to many art watchers as a sensitive painter of Northern landscapes.

The Northern lights, the rocks and frozen water of this place he's painted over the years have sold well and made their way onto popular cards and posters.

But in his latest show -- All Things Bright and Beautiful, opening today at the Birchwood Gallery -- Shaw seems to have abandoned the North for the warmth of Hawaii.

However, Shaw, who lived in Rae for several years, says he will never give up the North completely.

"There's imagery in the show that's also Northern," he said over the phone from Nanaimo, B.C., on Tuesday. But he just couldn't get the images from a recent trip to Hawaii out of his head.

There will be paintings of parrots and detailed exotic flowers next to expansive Northern skies.

"I'm being a little bit indulgent," Shaw said of his tropical works. "I'm going back to doing stuff that I just love to do."

Shaw said the title of the show is from the children's song "All things bright and beautiful," a song from his childhood, when he caught butterflies and read The World Book of Knowledge closely.

"I clearly did not go in the direction I'm going in in all of my work in a frivolous way," he said.

Shaw, who admires the work of Tom Thompson and Vincent Van Gogh, likes to paint from memory, not on the spot.

"You tend to wind up painting what is there and not eliminating enough if you do it on site," he said. "I get wound up with, 'Oh, that twig goes there.' So you start painting a twig. But you don't need the twig."

He calls this process "a beautiful thing to do," he said. "You go back into a series of emotions and visuals you've had. That's what's happened with those Northern landscapes."

He admits painting tropical scenes can be "dangerous" because it has "been done" by so many people.

"Like in every cheesy tropical shop you see pictures of parrots," he said. "But I didn't care."

And besides, he'll always have the rock, trees and sky of the North.

"Almost like a chess game," he said of the North. "The landscape only has set players involved."