BA-NA-NA. Green light suffuses the translucent furls, and the leaf patterns are as fine and flowing as the grooves worn into the sand overnight by the wind. You can almost feel the quiet green gloom beneath a banana patch, hear the rustle of a lizard, smell rich, damp soil.

BA-NA-NA stands out from the rest of Daniel's architectural renderings. The young artist was at first wary of painting something that veered off the beaten track of his architectural style -- a style proven to be commercially successful by artists such as Graeme Outerbridge and Michael Swan.

"I've been looking around recently and there's a lot of stuff going on that's not your typical stuff,'' Daniel says. "I was talking with some artists a while ago and one said: `Let's work on having less pink cottages. Let's work on having less of the stuff people will buy'.

"I have to say, in my mind it's kind of a romantic notion to think that artists produce with no idea of the salability of their work. The question is, do you care about developing as an artist, or selling everything that you paint?'' Striking a balance between salability and artistic growth is challenging.

Tourists buying prints on Harbour Nights demand Bermudian content, and this is something that many local artists consider.

Daniel recently began selling prints of his work at Harbour Nights on Front Street.

"It hurts sometimes when you don't do well some nights, but you have to be positive,'' he says. "I want stability, but the art world means instability.'' Although as an art teacher at Bermuda High School for Girls, Daniel's life is wrapped up in art, it was a big decision for him to begin seriously pursuing his own painting.

It took the encouragement and support of his wife, Deanne, for him to create his first real body of work.

"As my wife, she'll have faith in what I can do,'' he said. "She basically tried to encourage me to be a seen artist...to get the work done. It took her being so close to me to say: `When are you going to exhibit?' "Sometimes I worry as now I'm sitting on a lot of prints and paintings that aren't selling. A lot of it has to do with my inexperience -- maybe I don't get out there with the force of other people. But as long as you don't go into it thinking you'll be a millionaire, you'll be satisfied if everything sells.'' BA-NA-NA, selected for inclusion in this year's Biennial Exhibition at the Bermuda National Gallery, is one of three botanical paintings. The other two pieces were recently hung at Colonial Insurance amid a series of Daniel's paintings of architecture and sailboat masts.

These latter paintings bear the stamp of Daniel's training in graphic design at Bermuda College and the Ontario College of Art, as well as the admitted influence of artists such as Graeme Outerbridge and Michael Swan.

"If it's similar to work other artists are doing, it's because as a Bermudian this is what I see,'' Daniel says.

"The architectural stuff I did was really a follow up from Bermuda College.

The sails are architectural, too. I still love painting architecture. I like the way that you can zone in on one section or pull back.

"I see it as kind of a visual vocabulary that Bermudians have. Basically it's just the imagery that we as people are familiar with, the brightness of the sun, the effects of night on a house. Sometimes we have to turn away because the sun is so bright on a rooftop. If you're living in Bermuda you can't get away from noticing those things.

"For me each one of those is almost a snapshot. That is on Cobb's Hill by the blue house.'' Daniel's balancing act "That one's at the last bend on Harbour Road. In Bermuda you give directions like `turn left at the big tree'. It's a visual vocabulary helping us determine where we are.

"The ones I'm most excited about are the plant ones -- BA-NA-NA, Locust and Wild Honey, and Traveller's Palm. They're meant to be seen together. I was timid about painting them at first, because they were different than anything I had done before.

"I really was afraid I wouldn't be able to get them alive, to get the light to show through the leaves.'' Daniel has observed the departure that many artists have made from traditional representations of Bermuda.

He said: "The work speaks for itself in that there is a variety there, there's development in terms of people doing new things, trying to broaden the base in Bermuda of what is art.

"I've noticed that a lot of people are not concerned with producing work that immediately identifies them as Bermudian. Usually, though, you can see how Bermuda influenced the work.

"For myself, though, right now being that this is really only my first body of work, it's only a stepping stone. I'm relying on the building blocks that all of us are familiar with -- the light, the architecture. For myself, I can't say how much further I'm going to take it. I'm just going to keep trying.'' BA-NA-NA: Daniel DeSilva's painting, BA-NA-NA, was included in this year's Biennial Exhibition at Bermuda National Gallery.

Visual Vocabulary: Daniel DeSilva believes his architectural paintings of Bermuda create a visual vocabulary of the Island.

Daniel DeSilva