Christmas in November -- Windjammer Gallery -- Hamilton New works by a dozen of Bermuda's established artists provide the theme for the latest group show at the Windjammer Gallery.

As the title suggests, this exhibit is presumably designed to turn one's thoughts, however unwillingly, to Christmas, and the idea that original art is not only a wonderful gift to give (and receive) but also, may well turn out to be a clever investment. With that in mind, there is plenty to choose from in this exhibition, with works that range from the frankly modest in price to the frankly outrageous.

As always in this gallery, the works are beautifully hung throughout the three rooms, often linking thematic similarities or interesting paradoxes.

Diana Amos, best known as a watercolourist, is increasingly involved in the medium of oils -- not that she has forsaken watercolours, as there are two exquisitely graceful flower studies, the trailing pink tacoma in particular, conveying a lovely sense of transient movement. Her watercolour of Girvan also illustrates her skill in capturing the quality of pellucid waters, in this case of a quiet bay slumbering under a cloudy sky. The most arresting oil is her view of Devil's Hole, with its central yellow cottage, vibrantly reflected in the surrounding calm waters; this is arguably one of her outstanding oils to date, shimmering with the colours of a summer's day and receding into the softer shades of background foliage.

Sheilagh Head, on the other hand, employs a much softer brush this time, to capture her ongoing love affair with the South Shore. The focus of her panoramic study of Horseshoe Bay is indicated in the sub-title, `Autumn Light', and painted on an overcast day, rendering the colours in beautifully understated tones. She also has two smaller, but important cottage studies, hung together and both underlining her innate understanding of Bermuda's light. Her Somerset cottage of burnished orange, is brushed in deep, confident tones that speak of brisk days by the seashore. A wholly different technique, where the paint is pressed rather than brushed to produce a lively `crossing' effect, is employed in the more mysterious, slightly derelict Warwick cottage rising up from a mass of overgrown grass.

Amy and Vaughn Evans are also painting at full strength: more pictures in her European series reveal that Amy Evans, too, is employing impressive new `wiping' techniques for her wonderfully golden-toned watercolour studies of sleepy French towns. The effect, as seen in the reflections of venerable buildings in a river, the warm shadows of a street scene, or the dusty heat smouldering in her Open Window at St. Lizier, is stunning.

Mr. Evans, continuing his preoccupation with banana plants, has produced a marvellous pastel study, appropriately named Banana Gothic, in which you can almost smell the rich dank undergrowth. There is also a pastel of Flatts, outstanding for its portrayal of the translucent deeps and shallows as boats bob merrily on the surface. There is something troubling about John Kaufmann's The Glory of the Morning of the Wave. A marvellously realised, glittering back wave gains visual ascendancy over the breaking foreground wave, which seems curiously incomplete. Mr. Kaufmann certainly knows how to paint flowers and his geranium study, stretching up from sun-dappled leaves is a case in point, despite a somewhat intrusive, highly toned background. My personal favourite among his offerings is the small, but evocative partial glimpse of St. Peter's church striking the sunlight as it towers above the palms and wind-swept foliage of the graveyard.

Other works that catch the eye are a trio of miniature seascapes by Diana Tetlow, some striking studies (particularly her serpentine Garden Roots) in watercolour and coloured pencil, more in the ongoing series of watercolur window studies by Karen Phillips Curran and some vintage Bruce Stuart scenes.

In his case, a return to the type of technique that made him an overnight success around a decade ago, is probably not such a good thing: his recent work has shown such enormous artistic progress that these paintings, while technically up to par, represent something of a regression into that tighter, meticulous realism which he had shown signs of shedding for a freer approach.

Patricia Calnan FORT ST. CATHERINE -- Elizabeth Mulderig's whimsical view of the St. George's fortress is one of the paintings on view in the current group show at Windjammer Gallery.