Heritage House presented its Tenth Annual Small Picture Exhibition through December 20. The show featured 17 invited artists whose paintings and drawings ranged in scale from four by five inches up to eleven by fourteen inches. They employ the paint mediums of oil, acrylic, watercolour and gouache, as well as the drawing mediums of pen and ink, charcoal and graphite.

This was an excellent opportunity for collectors to pick up a few stocking stuffers offered up by the gallery and their favourite artists. There are a few nice surprises among the show from a few of the artists usually known for their larger works. The smaller format allows the artists to show off their composition and design skills, while a few of them display a subtle sensitivity to colour that is not always present in the larger renditions of their paintings. Of the 99 paintings and drawings selected for the exhibition there are quite a few very attractive pieces.

This diminutive scale of art certainly does not take away from their impact.

Just about everything in the selection of watercolours of Christopher Marson meets the criteria. These small studies are no larger than six by nine inches, yet the wash techniques, minus the excessive detail of so many watercolour painters, give these miniatures the illusion of expansiveness. The paintings are subtle gestures completed with a minimal pen and ink finish to suggest boats, trees and buildings capes. The muted colours, while suggesting the Bermudian landscape, don't overtly romanticise it. The artist's colours and drawing skills are very hearty and sensible in the manner that they are convincing studies that dabble with wash techniques and experiment with interpretation without excessiveness. They convincingly expand the scale of the work so that you lose yourself in time and place momentarily.

Sheilagh Head exhibits a group of oil paintings on panels. The heavier components of this medium produce richer tonal colours which she accents just enough with brilliant bursts to pick up the composition of the paintings.

Southampton Hillside is such a painting. With its lush foliage framing the panel you are brought to a turquoise blue cottage that holds the complete painting in balance. Heron Bay is another favourite, where the composition is very solidly arranged. The angles and curves move you around within this small five by seven panel. The edges and forms of these small paintings are much sharper and crisper. These cottage paintings are the right size to liven up a small space with their ability to achieve spatial push and pull. The colours recede and project, giving a sense of depth within their small format. Ms Head and Mr. Marson both execute spaces that emphasise tightly woven relationships of shape and form. Their strength hinges on the arrangement of the objects and their proximity to create a wholeness within their tiny format. It doesn't hurt that they are very attractive to look upon because of the rich colours and the calming arrangements these artists produce.

Quite the opposite are the gouache paintings of Carolyn Finch. The technical proficiency and exacting detail convince us that we are actually looking out of a window. The paintings are flawless in catching the light and the sensation of being right on the spot. Where the other artists mentioned are interpreting nature, Finch's paintings give us the straight image and make us look closer and closer to catch anything that can take us from her illusion of reality.

Utilising the gouache medium to quite a different effect are the pop-influenced paintings by Nick Silk. These candy-coloured paintings take the parfait and pastel colours of Bermudian architecture a step further to make the landscape come alive. Plastic colours replace the deep colours representing fertility and growth, destroying the illusion of spatial depth.

They create a shallow space where nature and buildings exist side by side.

Peter Graham's influences owe much to the early Fauve paintings of Henri Matisse and Maurice Vlaminck, in their agitated and joyful colour application.

The harried and intensely colourful paintings catch the shimmer of reflected water and the brilliance and gaiety of colours that can be seen in the harbours among the sails and masts. He leaves open areas of white paint which add an abstract quality and gives more attention to the brushstroke as a shape in itself. As these brushstrokes build up, they become a code to deciphering the array of colour within the picture. These brushstrokes become the recognisable shapes of land, boats, sea and sky. The two paintings best achieving this effect are Deco Bouquet and French Yachts. Another fine colourist is the painter Maria Smith, whose deliciously executed paintings are in transition. They are becoming more luxurious in their handling of paint and sensitivity in colour. The warm colours create the fantasy of Paul Gauguin's early post-impressionist work, and the lavish impasto stroke of Van Gogh. In the painting, The Harbour, it looks as though she paints with a brush larger than required to create slick, swirls and strokes of paint that luxuriate in the excessiveness of the richness of oils. Colour selection is not from observed colour, but based on the artist's impressions and sensations. These are warm paintings that evoke a subtle heated sensuousness.

The biggest and baddest of the large canvas painters both achieve interesting interpretations in this small format as well. Jonah Jones and Robert Bassett come up with some tasty little pieces for this particular theme show. Jones' usual slathering of paint is subdued here and he really has some nice translucent blends and layers that evoke a richness that sometimes eludes his larger paintings. Robert Bassett's entries are a series of caricatures on deckled paper entitled Sketch Primitifs. The sketches are loopy, freestyle interpretations that are enlivened by the rough texture of the paper. The simplicity of the drawings are exaggerated by the grand framing. The remaining artists in this show's paintings and drawings range from the decorative to some pieces that can he described as loosely expressionistic.

ROLAND RUSSELL ARTISTS ART REVIEW REV