Arts' Edinburgh Gallery -- Hamilton City Hall -- October 14 to 28 Fluffy little kitty cats and doleful-looking doggies. The snowy slopes of Colorado and setting suns in Sussex.

These are the images in the art of Valerie Tennent, a Bermudian transplant from England whose work -- mostly watercolours and oils -- has been on show at the Bermuda Society of Arts' Edinburgh Gallery since Saturday.

As, moreover, the subject matter would suggest, the exhibition, a hodgepodge of landscapes and still-lifes that doesn't seem to have any thematic directive at its core, is dripping with a fuzzy sentimentality that would make even Mary Poppins cringe, overripe images that might have been more appropriate on the cover of a Hallmark greeting card than the walls of a fine-art gallery.

Depicted in a series of overly cutesy poses, for instance, the feline subjects of Mrs. Tennent's trio of gouache works are particularly hokey, their too-too preciousness suggested in such titles as "Under the Umbrella'' or "Just Resting.'' On a similar note, the title subjects of Mrs. Tennent's "Autumn Leaves,'' an immediately striking landscape in oil, have been richly and romantically rendered, although the corresponding sky -- a nebulous melange of yellows and purples and pinks -- has been rather too much so.

In other words, the viewer could easily imagine the superimposition of a scantily clad damsel in the overmuscled arms of her roguish antiheroic lover, a la Barbara Cartland or Judith Krantz. It is eye-catching and lush, but doesn't command much respect.

"Autumn Leaves,'' in particular, highlights a frustrating failure of promise in this exhibition -- and, indeed, with this artist.

While, for instance, the assembly of 26 oils in the collection are in many respects uneven -- ranging as they do from the rather sublime "Approaching Storm'' (a beautiful and subtly evocative study of sand, sea and sky, with day-dreamy pastel shadings and gyrating puffs of grey) to the largely unremarkable (but not entirely merit-free) assortment of flowers, bouquets and vases -- they also reveal Mrs. Tennent to be a capable technician, with her proclaimed area of interest -- the interplay between colour and light -- a particular strength.

One painting -- "The Snow, Razenthorpe'' -- is a typical case in point, evoking both a strong sense of place (a wintry village setting) and the ethereal brightness of the sun when it shines on snow and ice.

A second painting, "Bermuda Night Sky,'' is just as successful, choosing moodiness as it does over sentimentality (there is a big difference) and subtlety over mawkishness.

Comparatively speaking, however, it is Mrs. Tennent's works in media other than oil that consistently come through in this show.

Her collection of small and very intimate watercolours, for example, are superbly shaded and matched, ultimately forming a charming little quartet. Her pleasingly inky "Thames at Night,'' moreover, is perhaps the best work in the show, evoking a mood of foggy introspection and the London of popular imagination.

It is these small gems, in short, that make a visit to the Edinburgh Gallery a worthy and enjoyable exercise in viewing. In terms of the many oils that accompany them, however, gallery-goers should be prepared to swallow a heavy dose of saccharine in the process.

DANNY SINOPOLI Tennent.