"A Change of Style": works by Andrea Carter at the Edinburgh Gallery, BsoA

Andrea Carter, in her one-woman show at the Bermuda Society of Arts' Edinburgh Gallery, deals best with mystery and enigma. She is at home with strong textures and is already confident and strong in her use of her preferred acrylic medium.This sense of mystery and enigma runs through most of the show from the sinister smile on the face of her blue swathed sheik outside the gallery doors to "Pathway to . . ." where indeed? The faintly visible and darkly brooding sea in the distance?

"Nearing the Orange Lands", a work previously shown next door, sustains this sense of menace despite the warm colours seemingly at odds with it. The admirable "Strangers of the 3rd Kind" is in the same vein, but considerably stronger. The sense is of crops at war, one army advancing on its roots become feet, its ears of corn transmogrified into weapons, against another similar army. The whole concept is that of "swords into ploughshares" turned on its head.

"A Fat WhathaveU" places an owl in a shattered tree against a dark looming background of mountains that might be bears. The same sinister effect is achieved in "Misguided" where two sinuous, arrogant flamingos pass superciliously behind some muddled looking penguins.

This sense of dislocation is rekindled in location in two more works, "Lake of Reeds" and "Forgotten". The former is of swirling plant-like shapes ascending high above a placid lake with an innocuous park-like bank of trees in the background. The latter is a rather beautiful, if sinister, scene of an abandoned shack in overgrown woods, all backlit by a cold rising moon.

In a slightly different mood, but still very much surreal, is "Paradise Found", a painted "savage" complete with bone in nose peers darkly through a surround of festive flowers.

When not in her mystery and enigma mode Ms Carter's work varies from the intense to relatively bland still life works. Amongst the intense is the priceless "It's not over Until". This is a frenziedly dancing (rather than singing) fat lady, the mounds and creases of her fat emphasised by a wild yellow outfit, arms akimbo and hands splayed in defiance of anatomy. "Papa Clown" with painted face and almost strychnine grin seems to brave the menace of the dim figures barely perceived behind a scrim.

Andrea Carter is still finding her way through attempts at various styles and subject matter.

The show is accordingly more interesting than of uniform quality. Any young artist who braves the public when still in a formative stage is worth looking at. Certainly Ms Carter's show should be included in a visit to the Society of Arts gallery at the City Hall.