Proctor Martin has to be one of the most stylistically consistent artists working in Bermuda today. I first met Mr. Martin about 1971 and his style now, is still much the same as back then. Of course there have been gradual changes in his painting technique and overall artistic skills, nevertheless, his small, atmospheric landscapes and seascapes would be recognisable as his, to anyone who knows his past work. Although he arrived in Bermuda almost 50 years ago, in a sense he never left his homeland of Northern Ireland, at least artistically speaking. His paintings seems more about the coastline of that often fog- and rain-shrouded land, than anything else.

What I have just stated, however, may be somewhat deceptive. For basically, Proctor Martin is an abstractionist, especially if you accept the adage that all paintings are to some degree abstract even when there is an element of reality. This is especially true in Proctor Martin's work. His land and seascapes are fundamentally a framework upon which to hang his explorations in abstraction materials and techniques.

Presently, Mr. Martin is showing his most recent work in the Edinburgh Gallery at the Bermuda Society of Arts. Since his work is modest in size, he was able to exhibit a large number of works in a small space without a sense of crowding. The total number of paintings being shown is twenty. Of these. several stand out. Number 15, 'Powder Snow on Grandfather Mountain' is especially notable for the fact that, although the title suggests a mountain, it could also be perceived as a beach or a detail of rocks in the snow. It is produced with watercolour and body colour, body colour being another name for Chinese white. Grandfather Mountain is the highest mountain in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

Another painting that stands out is number ten, 'Mining Scars'. This painting is the product of watercolour and acrylic. It is the result of observing a large scare in the landscape from a mining operation near Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Since it is an exceptionally textured work, my guess was that the artist had employed a palette knife to get the effects he did with the paint. This guess was confirmed by the artist as being correct. Again, as with number 15, it is a landscape that could be almost anywhere, a mountainside, the coast etc. This work is the result of Proctor Martin's experimentation with materials and tools.

'Storm Surge on Cornwall Coast', number 19, is another example of Martin's experimentation with watercolour and body paint. I understand that in order to achieve the various textures seen in most of his paintings, Proctor Martin pushes his materials to extreme physical limits. This requires that the foundation of the painting – namely the paper – be of considerable strength. In conversation with the artist, I learned that he uses a 300-pound cold-pressed paper. That means that the paper is very heavy and accordingly, weighs 300lbs per ream, a ream being 500 sheets of the same size and quality paper. The fact that the paper is cold-pressed, means that the paper is finished by means of it being pressed between cold cylinders. This leaves the finished paper somewhere between the smoothness of hot-pressed paper and rough, that is paper that has not been pressed in any way. Cold-pressed paper is therefore slightly textured.

For this exhibition the artist has, through the services of Colourlab, produced a series of high quality prints of a selection of paintings in the show. These are available at the Bermuda Society of Arts.

Although stylistically different from Proctor Martin's paintings, I was nevertheless reminded of some of Mark Tobey's so-called 'White-Writings'. This is particularly true in those areas where Martin uses splatters of white paint. The intimate scale of his paintings also brings to mind the little paintings of Jules Bissier. These are two modernist painters that I particularly favour.

Mr. Martin tells me that he is moving in the direction of abstraction and already he is conceptually there. I, for one, look forward to that final step.

The Proctor Martin exhibition continues through January 16, 2009.