The late Charles Lloyd Tucker is currently being honoured by the exhibiting of selections of his art as the inaugural exhibition in the Berkeley Institute?s Exhibition Gallery. Since I am presently teaching at Bermuda College, I did a small survey amongst my students, many of whom graduated from Berkeley, by asking them who was Charles Lloyd Tucker?

Most had not even heard of him and those who had knew little, if anything about him.

This present exhibition is therefore timely, especially for younger members of our community, as well as those of us who are older and remember Mr. Tucker.

Charles Lloyd Tucker was an important contributor to Bermuda?s artistic heritage and it is important that we keep alive the memory of those from our past who achieved much and contributed much to our Island community.

Since some do not know about Charles Lloyd Tucker, a little biographical information is in order.

Mr. Tucker was born in 1913 and grew up around Shelly Bay. He attended and graduated from Berkeley Institute and in 1934 and travelled to England to study music at the Guildhall School of Music.

His studies were interrupted in 1939 by the beginning of the Second World War.

At that time he returned to Bermuda and it was then that he took up painting. He returned to London in 1948, but this time to study art at the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting. In 1954 he began teaching art at Berkeley Institute and thus became its very first art teacher. He continued in that post until his death in 1971 with only a brief interruption during the early 1960s. He was only only 57 years old when he died.

It is a personal pleasure for me to write this review, for being from Flatts myself, I got to know Mr. Tucker quite well, and he influenced me to also attend his old art school, Byam Shaw. His studio was only a short distance from Flatts, and even now I can look out my door and see his former dwelling just across from Flatts in Shelly Bay. Indeed his studio and dwelling is probably closer to Flatts than Shelly Bay proper.

As a young person, I regularly bicycled over to his studio to see what he was making. His studio was always a place of great fascination for me.

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And now to the exhibition, which consists of 35 works. It was organised by Marilyn Simmons and Garry Phillips. The hanging arrangement was by Sophie Cressel and David Mitchell. What immediately struck me about this show is the variety of techniques used. It appears that Mr. Tucker was a technical and stylistic experimenter, producing oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, prints, and sculptures and all these techniques are represented in the show.

When visiting an art museum or art exhibition I often ask myself this question: if you had to buy something from this exhibition, what would it be?

With the Tucker exhibition that would be difficult for I found several pieces that I would want to own. In the end, however, I did manage to settle on two pieces for my fantasy purchases. They were ?The Grasshopper? owned by Sir John and Lady Swan. This piece is a small oil painting in a semi-cubistic style. Its colours are incredibly beautiful, the dominant one being a powder blue. Generally the colours tend to be cool.

My other fantasy purchase choice is a small sculpture called ?Leda and the Swan?. It is carved from a piece of Bajan mahogany, which is not like other mahoganies that I have seen. The colour is not so red; rather it tends more toward brownish and olive.

The carving is abstract in form, and like Henry Moore?s carvings, it has a hole right through it. This piece carries a story, which I got from one of its owners Robert Barritt. This is what I learned: Back in the 1950s the Barritts were planning a trip to Barbados and when Charles Lloyd Tucker learned about it, he asked Mr. Barritt if he would obtain a piece of Bajan mahogany for him. This he did, and the following Christmas, Mr. Tucker gave the Barritts this carving which he had made from that piece of wood.

Near the entrance to the exhibition hall is another wood carving, this one an abstracted bust of a human head in White Cedar. What is especially notable is the way the face is depicted. Instead of a normal face, there is an abstracted profile which is countersunk into the surface of the face. It is a highly original way to depict the head. Obviously he had been studying Picasso.

Another notable work in the show is a portrait of his mother. I remember it from when I used to visit him and can say this, he certainly looked like his mother, for whom I know he had a high regard. An important drawing is his ?Land Tax Meeting?.

He occasionally created works that were political in nature, of which this is an example. It is probable that the individuals in the drawing are identifiable, but I was unable to do so and did not find any one else who could.

There is also a portrait of ?Weatherbird?, that character from a few decades back. This is a wash drawing. On the back wall is a mixed-media work, that makes use of a Japanese method of making a fish print. The actual fish is inked and then impressed on the paper. It is called ?Yellow Grunt?.

Near the front on an easel is a large watercolour that was presented to Berkeley Institute by the members of the class of 1931. It is of St. George?s as seen from the terrace of the old St. George Hotel. It is a sweeping panoramic view, not only depicting the town, but also the harbour and St. David?s and Smith?s Island in the distance.

There is a certain disappointment for me with this exhibition, however.

It is not that the show is a failure or of mixed quality or anything like that; It is because of the lack of certain works that I remember from when I used to visit him.

For example, I remember a large oil painting depicting many Easter lilies in a large silver urn that he was painting for the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. It was an impressive work, but no one seems to know who owns it now or where it is presently located.

I also remember a few small landscapes that he made while living in England, that were wonderful studies in light and dark.

These were some of his finest works, but it is thought that they were sold and taken away from Bermuda. This is a decided loss for the whole community.

The exhibition opened the evening of October 19 and continues for two weeks only.