American artist Donald Meyer has been in love with Bermuda since the first visited the Island 20 years ago.

Now he has had the chance to paint the Island for an extended period of time as the Masterworks Artist in Residence at Buckingham in St. George?s for the past two and a half months.

?St. George?s is a very quiet and friendly place and I have enjoyed my creative and tranquil stay here,? he said. ?My impression of the whole of Bermuda is amazing. I am in awe of the beauty and serenity of the Island ? the Island-ness, the silence of the colour.?

?When first I visited Bermuda it was in 1986 at Cambridge Beaches. I was so struck by its strangely ordered beauty! My triptych ?Tucker?s Town? is based on a cottage where my wife Dianne and I stayed in 1992 on Tucker?s Town Bay.

? ?The Bermuda effect?, from the first moment, provided me a sense of clarity, a reckoning. I can?t escape myself here.?

His Bermuda scenes show it, capturing the Island?s sea, sky, and landscape in a forever changing scene. The clouds are alive drifting in peaceful trances. Each work plays on the eye from moment to moment. The variance of the viewer?s interpretation goes from one extreme spectrum to another. Sometimes the clouds dance and other times they linger in a gentle repose.

Born in 1945, in a western suburb of Philadelphia, one of Mr. Meyer?s earliest memories is sketching Lincoln?s image from an American penny.

His father, an internationally known engineer, admired art and early indulged his son?s art interests by visits to the superlative collections in and around Philadelphia yet he opposed an academic art education.

?I came to think of art as a veiled gift, always following self-directed courses of study, extensive reading in art history and museum studies,? he said.

He started exhibiting and selling in commercial galleries in the early 1970s. After spending years struggling to define truly the meaning of his work, he re-emerged, consistently winning honours.

?Slowly I refined an understanding of the central images in the work naming them the ?New World or Americanist Paradigm.?

His work has been cited in the American art world as ?wonderful application of medium, abstract quality, scale and emotional reaction?.

Part of the dream-like quality of his work may come from his medium ? egg tempera, an ancient form of paint that was largely succeeded by oils.

He explained that it was the primary type of artist?s paint and associated art techniques that were prevalent in Europe?s Middle Ages. A simple explanation is paint made by binding pigment in an egg medium.

Tempera was traditionally created by hand-grinding dry powdered pigments into egg yolk (which was the primary binding agent or medium), sometimes along with other materials such as honey, water, milk (in the form of casein) and a variety of plant gums. After the invention of oil paint in the Late Middle Ages, tempera continued to be used for a while as the underpainting (base layer) with translucent or transparent oil glazes on top.

This transitional, mixed technique was followed by sole oil painting techniques, which for the most part replaced tempera in the 16th Century.

Since coming to Bermuda, Mr. Meyer has been busy creating an exhibition of work, The Triptych Tucker?s Town: ?The Mark and its Metaphor? which is painted on three large panels.

?The triptych is part of my work because it engages factors usually excluded in painting: time, movement and change. Beyond the two dimensions of a panel, triptych adds the fourth dimension of time by implying change and movement between the multiple panels.

?Also, by its abstraction of these factors, is able to treat the sequential element of time ambiguously to advantage of expression.

?What happened first, where did it happen and what changed. These are metaphors for the moment as a collect experience in the triptych form.?

When asked what gives him the greatest pleasure about his work he said when people come back and tell him about his work. Their perspectives change as they look at a piece.

?Someone saying they get feeling from my work ? that tears me up. Painting is a lonely task.

?I hope to be remembered by my work - that people carry it in their hearts,? concluded Mr. Meyer.

Mr. Meyer?s works will be on show at The Masterworks Foundation, Botanical Gardens from tomorrow from 5.30 to 7.30 p.m. He invites interested viewers to attend the opening.

He will also be giving a workshop at Masterworks Foundation Gallery, Botanical Gardens on Saturday, March 18. For further information, call 236-2950.