Emma Ingham Dounouk's boldly colourful watercolours are on exhibition at the Bermuda Society of Arts.

Considering the usual fairly pale palette used by many of our watercolourists, by contrast Ms Dounouk's are quite wild, making her something of a Bermudian Fauve.

The Fauves were a group of French painters of a century ago who were noted for their emphasis on colour. The leading painter was Henri Matisse.

The term was coined by the critic Louis Vauxcelles.

When at the Paris Autumn Salon of 1905, he saw a group of highly colourful paintings surrounding a Donatello-like sculpture. He exclaimed, "Donatello among the wild beasts!" The French word for wild beast is fauve, hence the term.

In her artist statement for this exhibition, the artist wrote about her interest in depicting shadows.

And her chosen subject, the lanes and old walls of St. George's, allows her considerable scope in fostering this interest.

Some might be wondering just how the artist manages to find so much colour in shadows, but although many see them as grey, in truth this is not so in most cases. If you take a white card or paper and cut a small hole in it and then use it to isolate the colour of a shadow, you will see that shadows can be many different colours.

For example, the shadows cast on a white wall in late afternoon, often are violet, especially if the light is tending toward yellow.

In addition to Ms Dounouk's interest in colour, another strength is her skill in drawing, especially the human figure and in two of her watercolours, she depicts people in the streets and lanes of our former capital.

I only wish she made more use of people in this setting, for towns are certainly man-made and an urban setting without people is unusual, especially in daylight. Yet, many of our landscape painters avoid depicting people. I can only guess that they find it a difficulty, thus the absence. This is not the case with Ms Dounouk.

Her training in fashion illustration is the background to her ability in depicting people as is show in two peopled paintings, 'Walk to Town', and 'Welcome to St. George's'.

Of the 10 pieces in this show, seven are in watercolour. One, a portrait of 'Trevor' is in graphite and two are the artist's experimentation with Sumi or Japanese ink drawings.

The exhibition ends today so you will have to hurry to see it, but it is worth the effort.