Focus -- Small Gallery at Bermuda Society of Arts -- City Hall -- Until November 13.

An unusual show which demonstrates a seamless union between photography and painting is currently on display in the new, small gallery at City Hall.

This first use of the gallery for a specific exhibition certainly confirms that this area ideally lends itself to smaller, intimate shows.

Just when we thought that every known method of portraying the Bermuda panorama had been exhausted, Ms Judith Wadson has come up with an entirely new technique. Her specialised process, which is a combination of technology and artistic licence, presents a unique aspect of Bermuda -- one that, through subject and treatment, evokes a sense of nostalgia for the Island of yesteryear.

She achieves this through taking the photographic image, transferring it to artists' watercolour paper and then highlighting the colours with pastels, watercolour or coloured pencils. The softened outlines and delicate colours have an appearance that is reminiscent of old, faded photographs on the one hand, and impressionistic watercolours on the other.

Ms Wadson, who majored in photography and journalism at the University of South Florida, has travelled all over the world as a photographer and features editor for Yachting magazine, and is presently a sub-editor at The Royal Gazette . She has an instinctive appreciation for the heritage of her island home. Whether she is photographing butteries or bath-houses, banana-patches or wayside barber shops, she captures the essence of a physical topography and lifestyle that is fast disappearing.

Her eye for colour enables her, too, to pick up on the importance that Bermudians themselves place on this very subject in their everyday lives.

Looking at her pictures, we realise that, not content with living on an island of brilliant natural hues that are intensified by the sun, Bermudians are not averse to enhancing this perpetual colour cavalcade: houses are cheerfully painted in myriad shades, often with a humorous touch, as in her Hog Fisher, where the turquoise and yellow trim of a waterside house is repeated in the fishing boat moored just outside the back door -- and even in the little punt riding alongside.

Rather surprisingly, even though the colours are sometimes softly muted, she is still able to capture the dreamy beauty of reflections cast over calm water, and through skillful use of graphite, restore both shadows and delineation to form.

The snap-shot sized images are mounted in large matte frames or in "shadow boxes''. As such, some should clearly not be separated: they form thematic or colour connections, as in the delightful quartet where the colonnade form is explored in rows of old bathing huts, and even carried through to the similar architectural sweep of the House of Assembly columns.

This show takes the photography of Bermuda into previously uncharted realms.

That it also takes the viewer on a trip down memory lane is a bonus and the exhibition should therefore have wide appeal. -- Patricia Calnan `RECOVER' by Judith Wadson