Gallery -- through November 23.

More, perhaps, than any other artist of the past or present who has made a speciality of painting Bermuda, Sheilagh Head may be most accurately described as the painter concerned with the transience of visualistic sensation.

Although she is usually described as a landscape painter, this definition really misses the point as it is her preoccupation with the quality and effect of light, the articulation of planes and harmonies of colour that interest her far more than the veracity of the view before her. For this reason, she tends to paint the same scene over and over again, in her ongoing exploration of the changes of light, atmosphere, time and season. In this sense, and despite the incursions of the developer, her Bermuda -- a place of brilliant sunshine, exotic shadows and vaporous mists -- retains a timeless appeal.

The title of "Colours'', then, for this, her first solo show in four years, is entirely appropriate. Back then, she surprised us by moving into another dimension, for while she continued to delight -- as she still does -- with her portrayal of Bermuda's architecture, sea, sky and favourite pastoral haunts, there was a new simplification of style.

Happily, her latest exhibition at the Windjammer Gallery confirms, in spectacular fashion, that the experiments continue. This is an artist who, long since freed of technical problems, can devote herself entirely to work in which the atmospheric qualities of colour and tone assume primacy over form.

Interpreting rather than reproducing, and cheerfully pushing the edges in her continuing dialogue with nature, she takes risks that would give most artists careful pause for thought. She can afford to do so, largely because she employs colour, not to highlight, but to eloquently underpin the diurnal forces or freaks of weather that suddenly transform a familiar scene. Few, for instance, could -- or ever should -- attempt her "Evening Light'', where the melding of sea and sky in a haze of stormy blue is broken only by a ribbon of low, crouching land.

There is, too, an audacious quality about "Pink Reflections'', an ingenious study of the effect of light where, as the title suggests, a huge expanse of calm water mirrors a group of pastel-pink buildings: the longer you look, a barely discerned undulating ripple becomes almost hypnotically apparent.

Again, "Afternoon Shadows'', which breaks compositional rules by placing a dark cluster of purple-shadowed rocks centre-stage, succeeds as a dramatic and cleverly draughted seascape that shows Bermuda in exhilarated mood, the cloud-scurrying sky reflecting the rhythms of foam flying off the sea.

"Sunlit Path'' is, in one sense, vintage Head in that she has sought out another of Bermuda's innumerable gardens where seemingly secret paths beckon and hint of mystery. This large-scale work paints the bordering flowers in orange and purple which, in lesser hands, would be merely garish but with this particular paintbrush, become a radiant celebration of colour.

Rather like Beethoven (if we may be so bold), where climactic symponies were followed by the exalted calm of those late string quartets, Sheilagh Head is also serenely at home with her more meditative studies. The most arresting of these, perhaps, is the atmospheric "Quiet Harbour'', where a pale yellow house, bathed in early morning light and cradled in a bower of dark, dark green which casts its reflection on the water, stands in lonely splendour at the water's edge. Here we have, incidentally, a prime example of how this artist never hesitates to change the position of hills or houses to reinforce a particular effect or atmosphere. (In her splendidly eerie `Ghost Cottage'', for instance, she places the sea to the right instead of the left of the picture). In "Quiet Harbour'' she has removed the boats to heighten the air of arcane beauty.

Despite the set piece Sheilagh Heads, where works such as "Railway Trestles'' confirm her mastery of composition, or "Sunday Morning'' where a speeding boat, viewed from a lofty distance, reminds us that humanity is dwarfed by the enormity of the sea and an apparently endless sky, we also see her steady progression towards abstraction. This is strikingly evident in her view of a windswept Church Bay, where the brushwork takes on sparser lines, the foliage a suggestion rather than a reality. Although miniature in size, "Somerset Bay'' also captures this simplification of style where perspective is encapsulated through vibrations of colour and tone.

Sheilagh Head has few rivals, either, when it comes to portraying Bermudian architecture. Her draughtsmanship, honed by years of study in England and Italy, is so confident that even a glimpse of a lone chimney here, a scalloped gable there, reveals the sheer poetry of our indigenous architechture.

If, in this rich visual feast, her two exquisite flower studies are almost overlooked, the viewer is provided with another huge bonus in the form of her Cornish scenes. Painted during the summer with a brilliant palette, and concentrating mainly on -- what else? -- the sea, harbour and fishing boats, the aroma of salt, oil and fish is almost palpable.

The image which, perhaps, more than any other, murmurs of post-impressionistic severity is her painting of Zennor in Cornwall. Seen from a garden from which a Van Goghian sunflower peeps, a dusty path meanders through a barely defined village, beyond which the yellow rapeseed hills rise in angular planes against the sky.

In typical Bermuda fashion, it was the local scenes that were snapped up by avid buyers -- another indication that `the regional movement' is probably here to stay. In any event, it's well worth making the most of this rare chance to see a whole collection of Sheilagh Head paintings. Hurry though, because it ends on Saturday.

---- Patricia Calnan