Shore thing

The pieces range from traditional paintings to driftwood sculptures and thrillingly evocative photographs.

Meanwhile future plans include a dedicated urban art show and an exhibition devoted solely to emerging and up-and-coming talents.

With eight to 10 shows a year planned at the Church Road, gallery, Neil says: "There's plenty of scope to really mix it up."

His main aim, he says, is to make art accessible and provide people with the information and background which helps them understand the work better.

"We don't want it to be like walking down Cork Street where you don't get acknowledged and people aren't willing to talk to you unless you have some kind of status.

"We aim to create a warm and friendly atmosphere which is welcoming, non-intimidating, and run by easy-going art lovers with specialist knowledge.

"Our philosophy is simple: art is our passion and we want to make it yours too."

Neil, who also runs a telecoms business, says opening his own gallery has long been a personal ambition.

"I used to be dragged around galleries as a child. I've loved art for a long time. It was a kind of hobby for me but then I really got into it and decided I ought to do something about it."

He spent nine months researching the art market, put together a website and then opened Floren. Together with fellow directors, Dan and David Bennett, the gallery benefits from some remarkably wide-ranging personal tastes.

Indeed their individual favourites cover everything from arnarcho guerilla street artist Banksy to the French impressionists, Sir William Russell Flint and even the one painter guaranteed to raises the hackles of art snobs everywhere, Jack Vettriano.

"We have very eclectic taste," says Neil. "The number one reason for buying art should be because you like it, because it jumps off the wall at you whatever it may be."

The current show, which runs until September 6, features the work of 11 artists including painters, photographers and sculptors.

"We want to showcase recognisable but very different art and one of our ideas was to have themed exhibitions. I believe it helps focus the mind a little."

The title Coast may be self-explanatory but the show contains a wide range of differing materials, styles and approaches by artists working in a number of disciplines. They include people like the painter John Sprakes whose work is described by Neil as "quite traditional, rather Hopper-like." Sprakes' inspiration is taken from the Norfolk and Suffolk landscape and uses colour, space and light to create serene isolation.

Then there's sculptor David Bradford who creates work out of driftwood and photographer Andy Hughes, fresh from a show at Tate St Ives and with what Neil is convinced is a high-flying career in front of him.

Another photographer exhibiting in the show is Baxter Bradford (no relation), who has a passion for making astonishing landscape studies with his large format 5x4 beast of a camera constructed from mahogany and titanium. His perhaps slightly unlikely day job is as a maths teacher at the Ballard School in New Milton. He often gets up at 4am or earlier to catch the dawn light and regularly photographs the coast from Hampshire to Cornwall.

All the photographs in the current show have been taken in Dorset including one made in the build up to a violent storm at Dancing Ledge at Worth Matravers, Two Minutes at Dancing Ledge, a direct reference to the length of the exposure. "It was incredibly windy and the noise was unbelievable," recalls Bradford, adding: "but because of the way it was shot the end result had a surreal quality. The sky was all blurred. It had a real sense of serenity."

It's this tangible difference, what he calls "the sizzle", that excites Neil about art and artists. "We want to offer people something different," he says.