With so many art shows opening last weekend the one no one should miss is also the one furthest away. To be seen at the Bermuda Arts Centre at Dockyard are works of Bermuda's two foremost artists, Sharon Wilson and Sheilagh Head.

Sharon Wilson continues to grow as an artist. The work for which she is best known, her genre pastels, have achieved new strength and greater variety than has been evident before.

For some reason all her works in this show are formally listed as untitled, but each one, fortunately, has a brief descriptive title in parenthesis underneath. I went to the opening on Sunday evening, where the dense crowd made viewing the pictures almost impossible. I returned on Monday morning and found that Ms Wilson's pastels were framed behind glass that reflected the strong sunshine outside in all her works facing the door or windows. This was a considerable disadvantage.

Non-reflecting glass is expensive, but might have been worth the investment. This applied to the very powerful and moving portraits facing the entrance. "Three Heads" was a black and white pastel of three men, their heads shrouded in cloth. They might have been Islamic insurgents had they looked a little more fierce, but I was told they were actually Gombeys. Whoever they may have been the work had immense strength, character and balance, one of the more fascinating features of which was the way their fingers both contrasted with and complemented the draperies. The fluidity of the composition served both to emphasise the individuals and to make a single whole of the work.

On its left was "Girl in Mirror", one of Ms Wilson's marvellous character studies which glean such depth and interest from quite ordinary people engaged in quite ordinary activities. This one, as the title suggests, is of a young girl studying her face in a mirror. Her wistful look suggests that she might be wishing, perhaps, that she were more beautiful than is the face she sees. It also assures the viewer that her strength of character will overcome any deficiency in pulchritude. It is one of Ms Wilson's remarkable strengths that she can pack so much "story" into to so little space.

On the other side of "Three Heads" hangs "Mother and Child". A much more common subject in art, this was lifted out of the ordinary by the intensity of the direct gaze with which the two are studying each other. Small details, such as the grasp the baby has on her mother's arm, bring humanity and delight into the work.

Not plagued by the reflection problem was a series of works, which I call her quarry series. These are of stoneworkers doing various jobs associated with stonecutting, from loading a truck to stacking stone. The cubist feel the stone blocks impart is reflected and contrasted in the angles of arms and legs as the heavy weights are moved. The gritty texture of the subject, stone and workers alike is perfectly suited to the artist's style. There is another in this Quarry series in Ms Wilson's retrospective at the National Gallery. To have them all as a set would be a highlight in any collector's gallery. Almost in the same style is "Fish Seller" where white plastic coolers replace stone as the cubist element.

The same gritty sense is also to be found in "Groceries". Here a determined looking older man in a motor cycle helmet is wrestling with two bags full of groceries while in the background, completely oblivious to the little struggle going on next to him, another man has his back turned. It is these remarkable insights into evidences of character in apparently unimportant lives that make Ms Wilson's work so endlessly intriguing.

Ms Wilson has also made a few small forays into brighter colour than is her usual wont. This is evidenced in "Girl in Blue" and "Two People, Blue Ribbon". I am not sure these brighter works have coalesced into a workable style as yet, but I have little doubt that the inherent problems will be overcome in the artist's usual masterly style.

By contrast, Sheilagh Head seems to have reached a plateau from which she revisits past trifrom which she revisits past triumphs. There is something of a sense of d?ja vu in her part of the show, though I have no reason not to believe all the works to be recent. There is a resplendent "Harbour in Winter", pulsating with the old tried and true mastery of light, sky and water. A splendid "Beach" hearkens back to the days when Mrs. Head often worked with John Kaufmann. Indeed this happy habit of working together amongst our better artists not infrequently has the odd result of producing a commingling of styles as well.

When I arrived at the opening the gallery was so crowded that I could only see one painting. My first thought was "Hey, I didn't know Jonah Jones was part of this show." He wasn't, but interestingly he had already picked the work in question out to own himself. It was "Riddells Bay" and in fact the similarity had less to do with style than with colour. There is also something close to duplication in some of the work and this takes a little of the starch out of the whole. There are two takes on Waterville where the artist hasn't moved her viewpoint more than a foot or two and the light hasn't changed. The same can be said for "Asleep in Somerset" and "Somerset" There is nothing wrong in liking a scene so much that you return to it again and again, but it makes for soporific viewing in the same show.

There are no abstracts in this show, but the nearest thing to one, "Paget Marsh" is a wispy swirl of cane grass framing a spindly version of St. Paul's spire. For some reason it made me think of Charles Dickens' poor old Miss Havisham. This wasn't the only work that seemed to lack Mrs. Head's usual forceful focus. In one of the two South Shore dunes scenes the path led to a satisfyingly mysterious goal. In the other it just drifted off into the grass, leaving the eye with nowhere to go. This same oddly unsatisfying effect recurred in "Old Walls" where a shady path led to a small sunny space. It had the effect of flattening the entire picture.

The nearest thing to a new departure in Mrs. Head's works was "Old Boat", a charmingly raked sailboat moored in a bay with an interestingly contrasted modern Hamilton in the distance. With so many of her paintings being of gardens and flowers without much in the way of focus, this was a satisfying change. Not the least interesting aspect of this show is the contrast between the two artist's work. Different media, different subject matter, different philosophies divide, but the unifying glue is the very high quality of the work. Don't head for the hills, head for the Dockyard.