Art shows with a theme are not always the most productive of talent. An exception is certainly the current show at the Bermuda Arts Centre at Dockyard that opened last Sunday. The show?s title is ?A Sense of Place? and it has drawn all kinds of interpretations from the nostalgic to the humorous, many of them also of good artistic quality.

Outstanding is the embroidery by Lynn Morrell. If not her most artistic creation ?Roots: a Bermudian Childhood? is certainly the most fascinating.

At first glance it is an embroidered tree in a varied background with stylised leaves. On closer study it becomes a road map with houses represented by roofs, thickets of bushes and trees, bays, a lake and, picked out in red stitches, a child?s route through the neighbourhood in which she grew up. The idea was perhaps borrowed from the dotted routes taken by the little boy in the cartoon ?Family Circus? but the impact in this embroidery is far more poignant. Every leaf has a comment written on it in fine ink script (take your reading glasses) sometimes describing the locale or the activity pursued there, sometimes recording an event, happy, funny or sad.

Once the route turns back on itself because the thicket of trees on the railway right-of-way was too frightening for the child to penetrate. Once the route to the lake was followed just because it was forbidden (is there a lesson for parents here?). For the most part it is nostalgic, but it speaks vividly to everyone?s childhood memories.

This embroidery will take anyone ten minutes or so to study. Anyone whose heart it reaches will take longer. It is as good a ?read? as any memoir of childhood I can remember. If Mrs. Morrell ever tires of creating her beautiful embroideries she could easily take up writing instead. Her memory is as vivid as her imagination. This single work is by itself worth a trip to the Dockyard.

I was delighted to find that someone had taken the trouble to depict the inimitably named but not particularly picturesque ?Place?s Place?. Vaughan Evans includes the well known Dundonald street venue in a series of traditionally but beautifully rendered ink and watercolour wash scenes of places well known to almost all residents and certainly to all Bermudians.

He fortunately downplays one of the most garishly painted buildings in Bermuda in ?Behind Court Street?, the view on the right from Dundonald going east towards Court Street. Otherwise his scenes are softly rendered and exquisitely drawn. I particularly liked ?Water Under Flatts Bridge? and ?Bailey?s Bay?.

A sense of place isn?t confined to particular locales. Two delightful photographs make a place of a hammock. Gitte Brandenburg?s two digital photographs show a girl?s head at rest in a hammock and then a pair of feet creating delightful swirls of instep and toes at the other end of the hammock. It would be unthinkable to buy one without the other. The fluid shapes of head and feet contrast splendidly with the course geometric mesh of the hammock. The photographs are, sensibly, in black and white.

Jason Harris has four works in the show only one of which strictly conforms to the theme. That is his ?Bermuda Ruin? in mixed media and framed, oddly enough, in a Bermuda cedar tray rendered almost useless for any practical purpose by the heavy impasto of the mixed media work. The ruin itself has a splendid sense of decay and mystery, but would probably be more effective in surroundings other than a tourist trap type cedar tray. His ?Four flowers? are in equally heavy impasto mixed media and coloured in a sequence of related schemes to good effect. The very narrow cedar frame enhances the boldness of the execution. ?Flower?, a single one this time, is similarly bold, but the colour is on the muddy and sickly side. On the opposite wall he shows an acrylic and oil abstract that is, frankly, little more than a mess. It hangs next to another abstract, this time an acrylic by Barbie Harris, this one an intricate, fussy concoction of vivid colours entitled ?Creation?. God had nothing to do with it.

Eileen Thorne?s ?Forgotten Past? is again a work in acrylic painted on a Bay Grape leaf and framed most effectively in suspension under glass. It is of the often-painted ruin high on its Southampton hill and is remarkably effective given the oddity of its canvas and the hackneyed nature of its subject.

Of the four works by Margaret Potts ?Valle de Vinales, Cuba? was the most evocative of place. Its grey green colour scheme spoke of lush humidity and damp. The opposite is the result of ?Borgo, San Lorenzo, Umbria? redolent of sun and heat and warmth and only slightly marred by the excessive pink of the foreground flowers. She seems less at home in Bermuda, though the lush shadows in ?Woodhaven? were enticing.

A strong sense of place suffused ?Holidays at Auntie Jean?s, Cumbria?.

Despite its bleak, cold atmosphere it is quite clear that Margarita Harries thoroughly enjoyed her holidays there. To give a lift to chill of Cumbria, Marlene Janxen?s ?Clearing Weather? is an admirable cloud study in watercolour, defined by a sparely rendered palm. I do not remember this artist?s name from any earlier show, but if she is newly arrived in Bermuda Chris Marson may have to look to his laurels.

Laurels Mr. Marson has, however, in this show with four of his splendid, spare, watercolour renderings. The quality of his work is so good that any preference really depends on how his subject matter strikes one. Take your pick.

Sheilagh Head has been to another purple paint sale. Never mind, she must be forgiven this time. Her ?Watford Bridge?, an indistinct impression of the bridge and the Somerset hill behind it in a late light is an intriguing study in colour and, dare I say it, the use of purple. Quality will out, even in a purple passage for which a writer would never be forgiven. That said I found the purple punctuation in ?Flowers of Maine? a little disconcerting. In her great tradition is ?Gentle Mooring, Somerset?. No more need be said: it is a great tradition.

There are two footnotes to this show. The first is a work in paper collage, ?Yellow House on the Hill?, by a duo, E K & Dharshini Rodrigo. The use of coloured paper was admirable and worked exceptionally well. Unfortunately the house was sliding down the hill. It was not the only house in the show doing so either. The other is a fine sculpture in Bermuda cedar by Arnett Dill. It is an abstraction of female bodies into which one may, as one always should with an abstraction, read more or less into it than the artist might have intended. It is beautifully executed from a large hollow stump, cut and polished externally and left raw inside. It is a solid, strong work with great promise for the sculptor?s future.

This is an interesting and unusual show and certainly worth the trip to the Dockyard even for St. Georgians.