David Samuel, the current artist-in residence at the Masterworks Foundation is presently showing his creations in the Rose Garden Gallery in the Botanical Gardens.

The exhibition opened on September 1st and and continues through September 15, 2006. If you want to see an exhibition that exudes happiness and fun, this one is a must.

I overheard people at the opening exclaiming about the colour and fact that many of his pieces show aspects of Bermudian life, such as Cup Match, the Gombeys, worship, as in the emancipation celebration at the Cobbs Hill Methodist Church, or even the Bermuda Regiment. Mr. Samuel is a retired educator, so one creation shows the interior of a Bermudian school room. However this work shows a police officer returning a truant child to his home-room.

Since a small Bermuda flag is on display in one corner of the room, we know it is a Bermudian scene, otherwise, it could be almost any classroom, anywhere in the western world.

David Samuel is a maker of Dioramas. He creates his scenes in small boxes, all of the same dimensions, each one being seven and half inches wide by twenty four inches long by an inch and a half deep.

Within this space he creates a scene in shallow relief, using all kinds of found objects, such as a tongue depressor, corrugated cardboard, seeds or even gauze from a first-aid kit and many different colours of paint.

The human figures are carved in wood and then painted. Although there are no painted shadows in any of the dioramas, they are not needed, as the gallery lights create real shadows within each diorama.

There are twenty-two dioramas altogether. ten are of Bermuda, the rest from many different places, such as Spain, Japan, Mexico, and various aspects of the United States but especially the sports world.

One diorama shows a scene from an Amish community, including an Amish horse-drawn carriage. He says that each diorama takes about ten days to put together.

Although Mr. Samuel is a highly educated professional, as an artist, he is largely untrained. His vision has all the charm that one finds in the best of the naive artists.

In many of his scenes, he utilises a double scale. In order for the scene to be realised fully, he shows buildings, boats, streets in one scale but the figures are then shown in another, larger scale. This kind of perspective was used by Giotto and his followers throughout the fourteenth century, I suppose Mr. Samuel makes use of this device quite intuitively, however.

This is Mr Samuel?s second visit to Bermuda. He was here over fifty years ago on his honeymoon. His two sons have put together a book about their father?s dioramas. This book is available by contacting Mr. Samuel through the Masterworks Foundation.