Just when you think there can?t be many new ways left to interpret Bermuda?s visual charms, along comes Canadian artist Andrea Bolley with a different perspective.

Not for her the oft-disparaged ?little pink cottage? route; nor yet the riotous exuberance of splashy, sock-it-to-?em colours. Instead, she uses colour to present a distillation of what she perceives as distinguishing elements of our landscape: the architecture, the lush vegetation, coral limestone; the sea, sky and sunsets. What emerges is an abstract journey that incorporates cleverly folded, black and white striped paper pressed flat into colour fields in a style that is her own.

Arriving here in January as the Masterworks Foundation?s artist-in-residence, Ms Bolley has seen the Island in a variety of meteorological moods, ranging from wet ?n? windy tantrums to sweet sunshine and sumptuous sunsets. She has also had the good fortune to be housed within feet of the sea, and in an area which provides her with plenty of inspiration as she walks to Hamilton and beyond.

?I never paint from photographs, which is why I walk a lot, and look and take in things,? she says. ?I paint with what I am left with.?

This, then, was her starting point in ?reading? the Island she knew little of but had come to paint.

?Bermuda is one big botanical garden, so I thought I should do a series of paintings in four sections of colour, each based on the predominant colours that I feel are really the essence: blue (water), creamy-beige (limestone and palm trees), green (vegetation), pinky-lavender (sunsets).?

As it turned out, blue in Bermuda initially proved a challenge for the artist because there were so many variations of it, and she could not fathom why they were so different until she read a book on colours and learned that salt particles in the air have an effect on how blues are seen.

Another unexpected challenge was wrestling with the effects of the humidity on her paintings as she worked in her temporary studio.

Today, Ms. Bolley?s Bermuda paintings, entitled ?Paper Painting Series?, are the subject of a solo exhibition in the Masterworks Foundation?s Rose Garden gallery in the Botanical Gardens. She explains that she uses paper ?not as a traditional collage, but as a drawing element?.

?I fold paper to create the shapes, and the weight, texture and feel of the paper dictate the outcome.?

She stresses, however, that the folding technique is purely her own, and not origami-influenced.

As a colour field artist, Ms Bolley says she likes to use paper because ?there is a fragility about it?. The foundation of her paintings is plain white rag paper.

Her first step is to paint pieces of construction paper with black and white stripes and then fold them into shapes which are then attached to the background paper, using a plastic scraper, her hands or fingers, to flatten them until they are one with the surface. The ground is then prepared around the shapes, using multiple layers of paint thinned with polyvinyl acetate (PVA), a clear liquid designed to extend colour. Then, working quickly with sponges, cloths and water, the artist randomly thins some of the top layers of paint to reveal differing densities of colour underneath.

?It is like getting to know people ? what is on top and what is underneath,? she says.

In Ms Bolley?s ?green? series, the superimposed paper shapes are house-like, in reference to our architecture. One house, in particular, inspired her painting, ?Denslow and the Sea House?. A big fan of the film ?Wizard of Oz? because it represents many things in her personal life, Ms Bolley constantly admired a dwelling she could see across the water from her temporary home. Inquiries revealed it belongs to an illustrator of that very film, W.W. Denslow.

In her ?blue? series, the folded shapes are triangular and range in number from one to 11 per painting, surrounded by a variegated blue ground, which the artist likens to ?air, storm, and water?.

?Their placement is important ? a matter of scale and balance, but primarily emotion,? Ms Bolley says. ?You have to create a feeling for the texture. It has to have some kind of magical quality and some kind of emotion that will take you into the picture.?

In her ?creamy-beige?/limestone series, the folded paper takes on very different shapes, and that is because, when she starts to fold, she never knows how the piece will end. Here, palm trees have provided the inspiration for the shapes.

?I could not get over the variety of palms here,? she says, ?but when you look at them they are very textured. You look at the whole tree, which is very beautiful, but some of the palms I have looked at look like cement. Then you go up to their surface and there is this mossy green. It is a matter of zeroing in on a microcosm of the surface.?

Referring to one of the vertical paintings, the artist says, ?This is a dance, a moving shape. You don?t have to see palms (as palms) ? it is really a feeling left by the vegetation, and palms-in-the-wind movement.?

When hanging her show, Ms Bolley chose to begin with the vibrancy of the blues before moving on to the soft creamy-beiges, then the muted greens, and finally to one soft lavender-pink work, in order to leave the viewer with a sense of calm at the end.

Asked if, when beginning a work, she had a preconceived idea of how it would end, the artist said no.

?When you are into the painting it really tells you what to do. It is like a dancer or a jazz musician who improvises. Equally, the painting tells you when it is finished.?

Ms Bolley?s modus operandi is to paint standing up, and against a backdrop of loud music, and she loses all sense of time as she works. In Bermuda, whose light she describes as ?fantastic?, she paints in the mornings and in part of the afternoon, when the light in her temporary studio is just right.

She enjoys her career as a professional artist because to her painting is a challenge.

?It is just something I have to do, and I feel better when I?m doing it,? she says.

She is particularly fascinated with abstracts because ?it is a very generous approach for yourself as the viewer. You can interpret it the way you feel. Abstract is many things to many people. It can be a very spiritual experience.?

Following the recent, sudden death of her niece and fellow artist, Michelle Carleton McGilles, Ms Bolley is dedicating her exhibition to her memory.

For further information on ?Paper Painting Series?, which continues through April 22, see the Bermuda Calendar.