From the Mid-Ocean News

ART REVIEW
by Andrew Trimingham

The Light Fantastic: an exhibition at the Bermuda Arts Centre at Dockyard

THE LIGHT FANTASTIC, the title of the art show that opened at the Arts Centre at Dockyard last Saturday is a somewhat ambiguous one, but “tripping” it was not, I suppose, really to be expected. Some artists ignored the theme altogether; others tried with more or less success to introduce an element of fantastic light into their work.
Outstanding among them are the two watercolours by Chris Marson. To my way of thinking they are better than any of his 40 very fine works at present exhibited at the Society of Arts show in Hamilton.
The first of them is Beach Light, a beach scene with two or three incidental bathers on a hot, intense summer day. So magnificently understated is the painting and so strong the effects achieved with so little in the way of brushwork that as one is enveloped by the powerful sense of light and heat generated in the picture one is almost completely unaware that the centre of the composition is almost without any painting at all.
If it were not for his other work, tucked away in an unassuming corner of the gallery, I would have said that this one painting alone justified the trip up to Dockyard. However, it isn’t alone. There is also Mr. Marson’s Evening Cloud.
This is of a flat-bottomed cumulus cloud building against a clear evening sky of the kind that sends gently defined rays across the late sky. It is just possible that there might be a small boat moving in the shadow beneath the cloud.
That’s all there is to it and I am prejudiced against sunsets in paintings. This work, however, is absolutely compelling. I am at a loss to explain how this remarkable artist achieves so much with so little. Mr. Marson should be seeking gallery representation in New York and London.
Appropriately hung adjacent to Mr. Marson’s Evening Cloud is Dan Dempster’s Moonbeams, a beach scene on a moonlit night. Mr. Dempster's treatment of water is, as it always is, exquisite. His night-clouded sky is chill and hypnotic.
As befits a moonlit night this painting is both colourless and cold and perhaps not comfortable to live with. It is, nevertheless up to the highest standards of an artist whose work is very fine indeed when he sticks to his favoured subjects and media.
So by all means make the trip to the Dockyard. Mr. Marson’s work is not by any means the lone attraction. Sheilagh Head has five paintings in the show, all with “Light” in their titles. Winter Light, a tiny and exquisite work immediately caught my eye from across the room despite its diminutive size.
Thinking back on my now quite long experience of writing about Mrs. Head’s painting, I have come to the conclusion that I like her very small works better than any others. In fact, I have accumulated several of my own, all small.
Looking at Winter Light with care, I wondered what it is that appeals to me so particularly about Mrs. Head’s small works. It seemed to me that the confined space in which this exuberant artist is obliged to work induces greater thought as to how the success that comes to her so seemingly easily in her larger work can be achieved with the necessary refinement of style.
She seems always to win out over her self-imposed constrictions with flying colours.
Fantasy Light, on the other hand, is a quite large, brash abstract executed with bravado style and a ghastly hot pink colour scheme that might relieve the gloom of a coal cellar, but in any other room would cause a case of delirium in minutes.
Happily, there are three other Head works in her best traditional style. Harbour Light, looking across at the Walford point by the Dinghy Club in an early light, presents a slight challenge, perhaps to emphasise the “Fantastic” sense sought by the show. The light source and the cast light don’t seem to agree. It is the kind of thing that makes me a little nervous.
Kok Wan Lee has three very effective acrylic abstracts in his usual style of cryptic tree scenes, but here with a refinement of colour scheme that I found pleasing indeed. Not so, however were his two watercolours that were orange and black or orange and vivid blue, uncomfortable combinations. Still in the abstract field there is a very interesting work by Angela Gentleman described as an oil, but richly enhanced by what appears to be gold leaf.
The composition is slightly off balance. This enlivens what might otherwise have been fairly straightforward.
Joyce Beale shows two of her lovely, muted batiks, with two more apparently in waiting to replace these as they sell. Where her batiks tend to be soft and free, her watercolours tend to be small and tight. If she could lend the talent that informs her batiks to her paintings they would improve markedly.
Summer Wood, an artist I haven’t, I think, previously encountered has four acrylic on wood underwater scenes two of which seemed a little untidy.
Juvenile Hogfish, however, had considerable panache and character, as did to a lesser extent Reef Squid. He also showed six works described as Van Dyke Prints using X-Ray Negatives. Computer- generated “art” is now coming out of the woodwork faster than termites in a house on fire.
At first sight it appears to be interesting, on second sight it seems repetitive, then it becomes merely boring and contrived. There is more artifice than art in most of it.
To understand more clearly what I mean one need only go to the National Gallery’s deadly Biennial. That said, of course, digital art isn’t by any means all bad. The digital photographs by Kelvin Hastings Smith of various water effects are quite out of the ordinary run-of-the-mill digital works.
There is plenty of varied interest in this show and several works that it would be a shame indeed to miss. It is a very good reason all by itself for a trip to the Dockyard.