The Emma Ingham Dounouk exhibition at Common Ground, is also about Common Ground. Ms Dounouk has recently spent time at this popular café, drawing its regular patrons, as well as the employees.

This is the essential subject of this unusual show. The show's title is "Uncommon Lines".

There is a considerable history of depicting café, tavern and cabaret scenes in western art, going back, at least to 17th Century Holland.

Similar representations can also be seen in 19th Century French Impressionist and Post Impressionist paintings, as pictured in the art of Degas, Renoir, Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec and Cezanne.

Even Picasso, during his Blue Period, painted such subject matter. But it is almost unheard of in Bermudian art.

That is, until now. The current exhibition is therefore ground-breaking in that Ms Dounouk has undertaken to introduce this subject to the local art scene.

I first came across Emma Ingham Dounouk's art back in the early 1970s.

In those days, upmarket clothing stores, utilised fashion illustration in their advertisements. The primary fashion illustrator here in Bermuda, was Ms Dounouk.

Having been trained in the sophisticated fashion world of New York, she then returned to Bermuda, where she applied her skills to the local fashion scene.

Her illustrations where, at that time, utilised by the best shops in Hamilton.

Eventually that type of art went out of fashion, at least for a while, but on a recent trip to New York, I noticed that it is again coming back into vogue.

In the 1970s fashion advertisements were notable for their elongated, attenuated lines.

This gave them a certain manneristic, urbane aura that had great appeal to the trendy set.

In a recent interview with Ms. Dounouk, she pointed out, that in art college, she was first trained as a general illustrator, but with an emphasis on fashion.

Much of her instruction was on such basics as figure drawing and the study of anatomy.

That knowledge she applies to her current emphasis in describing local humanity.

In this present exhibition, however, Ms Dounouk's use of line is less than that seen in the artificial world of fashion illustration.

Today, her use of line is more truthful, more that of reportage. In conversation, she mentions her admiration of the 19th Century French artist, Honoré Daumier, whose use, primarily of line, was so truthful, the French establishment sent him to gaol.

His line was more that of caricature and his subject matter the corrupt world of his day.

In that respect, he resembles the eighteenth century English artist, William Hogarth, who also depicted similar situations in the London of that time. Hogarth is also much esteemed by Ms Dounouk.

For this exhibition, Emma Dounouk has restricted herself to using pen and ink and watercolour washes as her mediums of choice. She is also adept at using other media, such as graphite, charcoal and sumi-e, a Japanese method of making wash drawings in ink

The exhibition continues through July 16.