Longtime friends watercolourist Karen Phillips Curran and illustrator Emma Ingham-Dounouk open their first joint show ?Shadows and Shapes? at the Edinburgh Gallery tomorrow evening.

The show is a blessing for Mrs. Phillips Curran who suffered from a rare form of cancer, which almost robbed her sight of her sight a few months ago.

?It was so scary,? she said. ?They found that I had an iris melanoma. It is a rare disorder. Asians don?t get it, black people don?t get it, only white people, with blue eyes and freckles.?

?And I knew that I have had that brown spot in my eye for as long as I can remember. I can remember when I was a teenager and people would ask, ?what?s that in your eye?? and I would say, ?that?s my freckle? ? but no one ever told me that there was a possibility of it becoming cancerous.

?It really is a rare thing, and I don?t know if the doctor was joking when he said one in six million.?

Treatment was painful, with a piece of gold embedded with radioactive pellets sewn onto it placed directly on her eyeball for a week. Afterward, her sight was still less than normal, but she decided to get back to her first love ? painting and made some discoveries.

?I thought can I paint this way or that way. But, I discovered that there are so many things (with sight) that you do that you just take for granted. But you know, I found that there are so many things that you do without looking and without thinking about it, especially stuff in the kitchen, like cutting vegetables ? it?s all feel and touch.

?So, when I started to paint again, I still couldn?t see very well and I realised that part of it is feeling the pressure and how sensuous it was on the hand, but it?s not good for all of it, you still have to see.

?So, when I started painting again, I think what I was doing was testing myself ? how well can you paint and can I still do it. So, they are little. I don?t usually paint this small.?

?Karen?s work is all about the shadows and forms, and mine is about the shapes. It was really about the juxtaposition of Karen?s watercolours of 8X10 and my big bold lines,? said Mrs. Ingham-Dounouk.

The two met through Lloyd Weber when he came to borrow an easel for Mrs. Phillips Curran.

?Through that we have established a wonderful friendship,? said Mrs. Ingham-Dounouk. ?I think over the years I?ve had to say thank you to Karen for her encouragement and for allowing me to look into her window of thought.

?It really gave me a total understanding of her work.

?Not only was her work beautifully executed, her watercolours are executed beautifully. I think that was the lovely thing that we could go out and work together and me being the Bermudian could take her to wonderful nooks and crannies.

?There is a horse watering trough near Gibb?s Hill Lighthouse and it was filled with Wandering Jew plants and the shadows and shapes at four o?clock in the afternoon were just beautiful.

?I dragged her there and then around to the back of town. Her work is a story in a visual sense and each one tells a new story.?

Mrs. Phillips Curran said she first came to the Island in 1986 on a deal she made with art-loving friends.

?What I would do is get a dozen people to give me $100 each and I would go away to paint,? she said. ?I went to Ireland, the Laurentian mountains, upper New York State then I thought that I?d like to go somewhere warm.

?I?d give people paintings when I got back because they had given me $100 to go away. It worked really well and when I came here I just really loved it, because it?s safe, and warm, and I feel like I can walk around and not be bothered.

?And so I did paintings and when I came back everybody loved them and I thought I wanted to come back, but I decided to come back on my own.?

When she returned to the Island she brought slides with her and went into the now defunct Windjammer Gallery.

?I thought well, nobody knows me here and I can just go into the best gallery and say, here?s my slides what do you think?? she said, ?And I thought they would say, ?very nice dear, call us later? but, that?s not what they said.

?The late Susan Curtis said they loved them and for me to send some when I got home. I sent them and that was almost 20 years ago.

?The worst part was that I had no one to tell. My work has consistently sold throughout the years and it has just been wonderful. I get to paint things that I love, the little shutters, the shadows and the light, and the peeling paint, all the little details.?

Mrs. Phillips Curran said she has always painted architectural forms, which were often far larger than her current works.

?My paintings are usually 22 X 30,? she said. ?That is the way I feel about these little guys (paintings) after so many years of painting the same subject material I often worry that I?ll get bored of it, it?s like ?how many shutters can you paint?? Apparently, a lot of them!

?I have the free will and I can take any place and quite often what I do is to turn it into my place, I make it mine by removing things from different areas. It is a little imaginary place ? they are very real.

?I love all the rust, and the mossy bits, and all the little discolourations, the little hooks at funny angles, the welcoming staircases, Dutch doors, and I?ve worked a bit more with purple this time.

?It is a lot of times really about the shadows, which grabs me at first and they change constantly. I was here one year and the oleander flowers were everywhere, so I just spent time painting them and playing with them. I also love going to St. George?s to work, because I catch a lot of the old stuff.

?One of my paintings is of an old style letter box, I?ve painted this door so many times. I have lots of old pictures of it, but they have changed it now.?

When she is on the Island she collects images for future use.

?I photograph and I sketch while I?m here, to make sure that the colour memory is correct,? she said, ?Because when you get the photographs the colours aren?t necessarily right and I always use Fuji film when I?m here because the colours are better, the greens and the blues are better. But it doesn?t take any of the reds, they all come out looking like pink.?

Her history as a painter dates back some forty years or so, as she began painting as a pre-teen.

?I began taking watercolour classes when I was eleven,? she said, ?We were just doing still lifes and my teacher was a wonderful realist painter in oils, and she did animals, horses, and portraits of dogs. She did beautiful and really fine work.

?I remember thinking, ?Yeah, I like this. This is better than being a vet?. It has been since then and I feel really lucky that I was able to do what I wanted to do from very young.

?For so many people it takes a long time and it is really interesting where people start their art.

?Sometimes all it is, is a little push of one person saying to you, ?You?re good at that?, and it makes such a difference.?

She has 30 pieces in the show and she loves when the art simply good on its own, because everything else is a compliment.

?Sometimes a piece of work looks fine without anything around it,? she said. ?And once it has a matt on it and they are framed ? it looks better ? and then when someone that loves them puts them on their wall ? it brings it out even more.?

Mrs. Ingham-Dounouk said her work is a representation of the human form.

?The reason I chose to do the figures was in part because, it is a gift, but I feel that people tend to forget there are a certain amount of fundamentals to really good art or becoming a really good artist,? she said. ?And I think the human figure is one of the major stumbling blocks and the shapes of the human forms tell us so much. ?I think that when you get someone who is a natural there?s this incredible rhythm and poise. I think I am a person who captures the essences of the communication, so it is as simple as that.

?The other thing is that these are very fast, she (the model) did 30 second poses. This particular model had a natural rhythm and an understanding of what an artist would look for.

?It speaks to the female form and they are nudes. Each person has a story to tell that their body has told even before they opened their mouths and that is why I?m attached to my sketchbook for the same reason.

?And actually, having spent all the time I could doing life drawing, you get a certain buzz, understanding and you could be drawing someone and there is an element of communication.?

Mrs. Ingham-Dounouk?s is trained in fashion, general and courtroom illustration.

?I always have a sketch book because there is so much to work with in life and I couldn?t resist it,? she said. ?There is a sketch of an eccentric ?Dr. Whoever? at BUEI (Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute), but he was phenomenal, and as you go through you can see his hair flop over one eye, how he walked, he was the typical hunched professor.

?It was hysterical. The people in the audience made great unwitting models. It is the fun part of being an illustrator. In doing line drawings what I try to establish is like good English and the very essence of what you are trying to communicate and that kind of thing.?

Mrs. Ingham-Dounouk said so many artists today unfortunately they forget that the quality of the work begins with something as fundamental as the paper.

?And paper is chosen like we might choose a lipstick,? she said. ?I learned that from Karen and to put down the essentials ? don?t put down everything and it also goes back to my art training at Parsons School of Design.

?I had an incredible instructor who advised me to draw what I see, and not what I thought I saw, and that is something that as an illustrator you have to draw what you see, were an artist would say I have the latitude and the licence.

?That is why I always say, I?m an illustrator and not an artist. We have to discipline ourselves to push and push and to constantly push the bar as it were.?

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Shadows and Shapes runs until April 27. Gallery hours at Monday to Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information ( 292-3824.