A Bermudian artist with an international reputation is set to launch a big exhibition at the Masterworks gallery.

Dan Dempster, who has lived in the United States for several years, has spent nearly five years planning “Mullions and Moonlight”, his first solo exhibition in Bermuda for 15 years.

Mr Dempster said the 40-painting show, which opens at Masterworks tomorrow, focuses on the play of light on Bermuda traditional architecture in St George’s and the complex interplay of water and light on Grape Bay and other South Shore beaches.

“I was artist-in-residence in St George’s and I wandered around and decided I would have to do a show on the town and that lovely light and shadow,” Mr Dempster said.

“A lot of the paintings on display, I’ve been working on them for several years, pulling the whole group together as a cohesive whole.”

Mr Dempster, who lived in Boston for years before moving to California, said the centrepiece of the show was an award-winning 3ft by 4ft painting of Grape Bay.

“It was a piece I painted when I lived in Boston and it won best painting at the New Hampshire Institute of Art,” he said. The work was also chosen for exhibition by the prestigious Copley Society of Art in Boston, the oldest non-profit art group in America.

The exhibition also offers art aficionados the chance to snap up original views of Bermuda, as all the works are for sale.

Mr Dempster is now based in the Pacific coastal community of Palos Verdes, on South Bay just south of Los Angeles.

“Doing the Bermuda paintings again has helped to keep the homesickness at bay,” he said. “It’s one thing being in Boston when you can just hop on a plane to Bermuda; it’s different in California and also a completely different culture.

“But the culture in California around South Bay is focused on the ocean. They are coastal communities and they have a great deal of respect for the ocean, the same as we have here in Bermuda — but one thing they don’t have is rain.”

He added: “It’s delightful to be back home. When we moved to California last year, I spent the first few months walking around the bluffs just to get used to the different light.

“The colour is different, the water is a different colour and the currents are different from Bermuda.

“It’s a really magical place but as the light is so different, it took a long time to get my eye in. The cliffs there are actually red, but the light has to hit them properly to see that.

“The exhibition will also feature some works from California. There are quite a few Bermudians who have spent time in California who will recognise the area and have fond memories of it.”

Mr Dempster, a former Warwick Academy pupil, studied at Sheridan College and the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.

The former officer in the Bermuda Regiment and the Canadian Army Reserve is a full member of the Copley Society of Art and the Cambridge Art Association, both Boston.

He is also an artist fellow at the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art. Works by Mr Dempster hang in Government House, Masterworks and in corporate collections on the Island, as well as in Ireland and Canada.

The exhibition opens at Masterworks, in Paget’s Botanical Gardens, on Friday from 5.30pm to 7pm and runs until May 13.