Jonah Jones and Chris Marson walk a fine line. They make the difficult look easy, nevertheless, the way they paint is a considerable balancing act. Their rapid, spontaneous approach to painting, at its best, conveys a freshness that has great appeal and both are very accomplished artists. At times, however, their spontaneity becomes too spontaneous, resulting in a loss of compositional structure. In their current exhibition at the Bermuda Arts Centre at Dockyard, they seem, however, to have got the balance between their apparent effortlessness brushwork and structural stability just right.

Jonah Jones is almost exclusively an oil painter and his energetic slathering of juicy, colourful paint on canvas is quite luscious. By contrast, Chris Marson is primarily a watercolourist, who is noted for his delicate paintings of Bermuda's attractive beach scenes and pretty cottages. Of the two, Marson seems the more restrained, both compositionally and in his use of colour. Jonah's way of painting is more vigorous and gestural, but being an oil painter, the medium suits his energetic technique. Chris Marson's apparent restraint is, however, quite deceptive. I am told that for every painting produced by Jonah Jones, Chris Marson will, on average produce two and possibly three watercolours.

The Dockyard area is, for Bermuda, visually unique and even today, despite the gentrification of what was once a working Royal Navel dockyard, there are reminders of its past history. I mention the Dockyard in relation to the Jones/Marson exhibition, however, for this is the focus of their current BACD exhibition.

In this respect, their subject matter is less typically Bermudian and therefore, for them, refreshingly different.

This is an impressively large exhibition, especially when you consider that all the paintings in the show are the work of only two artists. In total, there are 98 paintings on show, 36 by Chris Marson and 62 by Jonah Jones, however, the average size of each painting is on the modest side. The largest painting is by Jonah Jones and it is only 24 inches x 24 inches.

Most are much smaller. I noticed, as well, that their prices are also on the modest side. Keeping in mind that Christmas is not much more than a month away, I imagine that this was much on the the artist's minds and why not? It has become something of a tradition in local galleries, to host exhibitions of small works during the holiday season.

If you like colourful paintings, there are more than enough in this exhibition, however, I noticed that there are a fair number of more moderate, tonal paintings, as well. From my perspective, I prefer the tonal works.

Although Jonah Jones is known for his large, bold paintings, in many instances, his small works, are his more successful.

The exhibition continues through December 3.