Dempster. Bermuda Society of Arts. Until November 21.

Physicist and computer animator turned artist Dan Dempster has served up an industrial-strength dose of beauty at the Bermuda Society of Arts Gallery in Hamilton.

For Dempster has managed to marry his previous training with the eye of a true artist to create a cool, grey complexity that deserves a good, long look to appreciate the work's intricacy.

Dempster has transformed the space at City Hall into a minimalist shrine for his stunning graphite and canvas squares.

His mission statement says he wanted to capture the movement of water and light over the rock shallows around Bermuda.

The 48-inch by 48-inch canvasses are intended to translate his previous drawings into a larger scale and using a different medium.

And it works perfectly -- the graphite shimmers on the canvas in light relief recreating perfectly the intricate interface of water, light and rock.

It's hardly surprising his job in Canada before returning to Bermuda was as a special effects man -- for the effects he has produced are a marvel which say more about the calm induced by Bermuda coast than a thousand representationalist reproductions of John Smith's Bay.

The 20 untitled canvasses line the stripped down and shuttered gallery space, carefully designed to concentrate the mind.

And the sense of depth created by walking across the front of one of his works deceives the eye so I felt I could plunge my hands into the water.

Staring into the works and moving around them gives a three-dimensional view which is different every time.

The grey paintings freeze the elaborate designs of water movement into the patterns of ice on windows or the shape of ancient fossils.

Numbers 14 and 19 in the series are particularly impressive, with touches of pink and blue betraying the artist's knowledge of the physical properties of light refraction -- but moving it firmly out of the realms of science into pure art.

And number 16 creates a beautiful complicated border of water broken by light and stone, drawing the eye into calmer, smoother waters at the centre, inducing a tremendous feeling of peace.

Dempster's works are expensive and perhaps difficult to hang in some homes -- but they're worth a redecoration job and certainly ideal for any corporate patron of the arts who wants to make a literal splash in the boardroom.

---- Raymond Hainey ART REVIEW REV