SINCE the gallery upstairs at Waterstone's came into its own under independent management, it has hosted a broad range of art shows and other diverse events – from burlesque and goth art to design-led homeware and eco-chic.

In its art, the gallery has perhaps tended towards the decorative and graphic art end of the spectrum and in this respect the latest exhibition, Six, is keeping that tradition alive.

Chosen from entrants in last year's Fresh Art and Design showcase, the show presents paintings by six local and regional artists.

The eldest appears to be Joan Beal whose faux-naïve watercolour portraits wouldn't look out of place in a glossy children's picture book. Publishers should come have a look. Rather encouragingly, Joan tells us that she started to paint as part of her recovery from a stroke at the age of 72.

Another in the figurative mould is Clinton Croson, whose lucid paintings sometimes stray into that murky zone known as semi-erotica – ugh. On the other hand, Croson provides the exhibition's most eye-catching moment in Viewpoint, portraying Muslim women, one of whom is wrapped in a large union flag. By rights it should make a CD cover for a band which thinks it has a point to make about integration etc. Extending the thought, perhaps it is also a painting which tries too hard to be topical, suffering from a surfeit of surface and a lack of depth.

Whatever you feel, it's the strongest image here and the first one you see when you view the whole gallery. Lorna Hooper's Traces of Virginia series aims at a place somewhere between graphic art and the figurative, being outlines of the face of literature's most famous Virginia, Woolf. On the other hand, Gillian Choo's Spirofern series lies completely in the graphic artist's real; her large and complex patterns – or motifs, she may prefer – are eye-pleasing and recall the mandalas of eastern spirituality.

That leaves two more. Steven Ingman, a winner of the Derby City Open, provides thick oil paintings of Nottingham scenes. He's from Bawtry, which may explain why his painting of the Council House is titled Nottingham town hall. But elsewhere he's certainly not picked scenes which are going to make it into a calendar on sale at the Tourism Information Centre: Yellow Sign, Trinity Walk; "YMCA, Shakespeare Street" and Mansfield Road, Nottingham, police in pursuit.

That leaves Eireann Lorsung, whose button badges and 3D paper creations, filled with sleepy heads and dream imagery, comes in from left-field. Born and brought up in the US, she endearingly tells us what she likes about England: "Everyone offers you tea and means it; the chimney pots shaped like chess queens; the feeling of being on an island and how people talk about the 'sea'."

Six can be seen until February 15.