BSOA Winter Members? Show, City Hall Gallery

As a member-supported organisation, the Bermuda Society of Arts mounts two unjuried shows a year in which all members are free to show their work.

Ordinarily this produces a very mixed bag, both of media and of talent. The members? show that opened last Friday is the usual mixed bag of media but there is unusually little untalented work. Indeed it is a show of considerable talent ranging through paintings, photographs and ceramics. All that is missing is sculpture.

As one enters the gallery three colourful and well designed watercolours by Ashley Robinson Roberts dominate the scene. They are strong, bold and quite large. ?Red Hibiscus? is a large close-up of the flower, focusing on the stamens with the rest of the picture filled with the red petals of the flower.

Her ?Orange Swirl? is exactly that, but carefully composed and fluidly painted. I found her ?Green Leaves? to be her most interesting and satisfying work. It consists of a swirling pattern of yellow ribs neatly composed and entirely filling the frame. Its near geometric result has the rewarding balance of a mathematical theorem.

The powerful, textured pastels of Dean Walker are here in force. His confident command of roiled seas is uniquely impressive and obviously the result of years of study. I understand Mr. Walker hails from California where there are roiled seas aplenty, but without the glorious colour characteristic of our local waters. He has adapted to his new seas with considerable success. His almost impasto technique with pastels is also unusual. His handling of people, however, isn?t as confident as his handling of water.

Stella Shakerchi?s complex, flowing quasi-geometric works are as subtly and pleasingly coloured as ever. The more abstract and fluid ?Squiggly?, however, has neither the balance nor the colour scheme of the geometric paintings. Surprisingly for someone whose technique in her geometric works is so exacting, her two paintings of sunflowers, while having an excellent sense of design, lose much to an indifferent painting technique.

Surprising, too, were the four ?Ingredient? works of Kok Wan Lee, normally an abstractionist. The ingredients were clearly identifiable but lacked Mr. Lee?s usual clarity of colour, being on the chalky side.

Jennifer Keats? rather pedestrian set of series works were relieved by the marvellous humour in her ?Apple Series? where the six apples depicted are progressively more eaten until the final painting is merely of the surviving core.

The digital photographs of Scott Hill were all interestingly conceived, though I found ?Hamilton? as uncomfortable as the effects of new varilux lenses. The streets lurch. So too does the repetitive background of some of Bermuda?s ugliest buildings in the otherwise rhythmic, flowing, vibrant ?Whales?, a digital overlapping of the whales? flukes in the XL pool. The impressionist effect achieved in ?Reflection ? Paris? was fascinating, if probably upside down.

Still in the photographic department Michael Fahy?s ?Forgotten Window? was evocative and compositionally interesting because of the juxtaposition of rectangular window with vaulted arch. The subject of his elusive ?Chasm? escaped me, but as an abstract it was interesting.

Michelle Kromer?s ?Rays of Hope? caught a meteorological moment very successfully just as her ?Wave of Emotion? stopped the movement of an advancing breaker.

Almost photographic is the single charcoal on paper work by Antoine Calvayrac. His ?Blazon?, an armorial carving at the Anglican Cathedral, is so perfectly rendered that it requires concentrated study to see that it isn?t, in fact, photographically achieved.

Joyce Beale, distinguished for her batik works, here is also showing a splendid abstract titled ?Offshore?, intensely coloured and thoughtfully composed. She also has two batiks, one of which, ?Mother and Child? turned out to be a rather puzzling abstraction in a somewhat dull colour scheme. ?The Chase?, on the other hand, is a dramatic departure in both colour and style, having an almost Aubrey Beardsley sense of mild depravity about it.

I haven?t covered the entire field. For a members? unjuried show it is unusually good and there are some 90 works. They are certainly worth a visit.