Throughout all my professional artistic life, I have been drawn to the work of young artists. It started when I too was a student. Then, I wanted to see what my competition was. Later, as an educator, I wanted to see what my students were up against.

Eventually, I recognised that the young, not having any particular artistic reputation to protect, were more inclined to experiment and explore. That is the reason why so-called cutting-edge art generally is the creation of the younger artists.

Alice Courtet, currently exhibiting her work in the Rose Garden Gallery at the Masterworks Foundation, is just such an artist. She is young and exploring. Her work is therefore stylistically varied.

What is fascinating about this exhibition is that it quite graphically illustrates her artistic development over the last four years, since her arrival in Bermuda in 2002. Alice Coutet is, it seems, largely self taught. She did study at the London Guild Hall for a year, but other than that, and what she learned in secondary school, she has been largely on her own.

What is so extraordinary though, is that this is her second one-person exhibition since arriving in Bermuda, and like many artists, she has had to squeeze her artistic activities in between work, in her case in the insurance sector, and all the other requirements of just living. The nature of Ms Coutet?s explorations have been largely stylistic. Most of her endeavours has been directed toward developing her artistic skills in recreating her visual world, namely, Bermuda.

Her earlier works are bold, colourful, but often somewhat stiff and inclined to flatness. This is because her shapes have either hard edges, which make them appear as if cut out of some flat material, such as paper, or they are outlined by a darkish line running around the shape.

Either way, these earlier works tend to flatness in appearance. This is not a criticism, however, it is just an observation. There is a long tradition for this kind of approach; a primary example being the Japanese print.

Possibly her best work in this style is her depiction of Queen Street in the painting entitled, ?A Butterfly Paradise?.

Apparently all of her attempts at realism are based upon the use of photographs. Her work is a kind of photo-realism.

More recently Ms Coutet has been breaking away from her earlier approach to realism. Now her shapes have softer edges and the outline has been eliminated.

With this softer approach, her work now appears to have greater depth and dimensionality.

A good example of this newer way of painting is her ?Blue Poinciana?.

Her most recent painting in the show is a work entitled ?twenty-Two.? It is possibly the best painting in the show. It depicts a portion of a wooden gate hanging from a Bermuda stone pillar. One sees beyond the gate to the sea, framed by vegetation.

As a result of a recent visit to New York and opportunity to visit art museums there, Alice Coutet has been investigating aspects of abstraction. Even before this important visit to New York, however, it seems she war interested in Abstraction, as well as realism for her earliest work in the show is an abstracted vision called ?Three Men?.

Alice Courtet?s three approaches to paintings almost appears that this is a three person exhibit. She joins other artists in defying consistency of style, a concept that was trumpeted by critics a few decades ago; it is no longer so important after-all and numerous artists today are noted for being all over the place stylistically.

To summarise this exhibition by Alice Coutet, I see her endeavours at realism as more resolved than her attempts at abstraction.

That is not to say that her abstracts are unsuccessful. This side of her artistic investigations just needs more time to develop and her model in Georgia O?Keefe is a good one.

The exhibition continues through September 21.