WITH my well-known dislike of pink I drove up to the Dockyard in considerable trepidation to look at the dreaded "Pretty in Pink" show. I needn't have worried. Almost without exception the Arts Centre members have resisted temptation. Hardly a "tourist trap" painting was to be seen. Almost everyone had resisted what I refer to as acid or wince-pink, the kind of pink often seen on respectable ladies on their way to church on Easter Sunday, but a pink to be eschewed in almost any respectable painting. Orange was widely used to alleviate the sickly sweet effect of excessive pink and at first glance the show seemed to have completely defeated the fell intent of the theme, but, as it turned out, not quite.

The show started with three flamingo heads by Eileen Thorne, red rather than pink, and contorted into fascinating compositions set against uninflected dark backgrounds. Her exquisitely painted eggs did, on this occasion, lean towards the "tourist trap" mode with trite Bermudian subject matter. Frank Chiappa's surreal vision exceeds his painterly grasp. He was followed by a collage of "wince" pink ribbons woven in squares with small, mildly risqu?, photographs spread around within the interstices of the ribbon arrangements.

The imagination and compositional effect of this work by Elaine White easily overcame the birthday cake colours involved.

Kok Wan Lee's was a gentle, almost pastel-like acrylic that managed its subdued colour scheme well.was less successful and two were neither pretty, nor save for an impression of skirt, anything more than gender neutral.

Christopher Marson wrestled manfully with the theme, rescuing , one of his finest spare, suggestive watercolours from a pink excess with a dusty orange silhouette of palms.

His one oil, fractured its sun by having the cloud plane behind the sun plane, leaving the sun looking fragmented.

One of the star turns of the show was, unsurprisingly, one of Lynn Morrell's marvellous textiles.is a study of bay grape leaves, some rendered dimensionally and standing proud of the ground.

The technical ingenuity and skill of these works increases year by year, as does the subtlety of her colour schemes.

Almost as fine is . The cottage itself is, happily, out of the frame altogether and can only be detected in subtle horizontally defined reflections that make up a very skillful composition. There is pink, but not much.

Most disappointing among our best known artists was Jonah Jones. Several of his works succumbed to overdoses of "wince" pink and would have done better being worn to church on Easter Sunday. was essentially a tourist trap work. Only and escaped the plague, being rescued by their orange balance. The former are all small works.

His one large work, is marred by the horrible colour of the offending boat. It unbalances Mr. Jones' usual good eye for colour and looks more like an oversized jellybean than a boat.

Having little knowledge of ceramic work I usually pass it by. Helle Pukk's three works in this show are, however, noteworthy. is an elegantly shaped, but entirely functional serving dish with a fine painting of its berry branch contained within its bowl. Two trays were similarly simple, elegant and functional and there was no excess of pink.

Hanging above them to take advantage of the light was Vivienne Gardner's graceful group, , in etched glass. These were the dark lavender alamandas rather than the usual yellow and thus made it under the pink wire, but only just.

With a pink theme babies were inevitable. Fortunately the few that are there are not over pink and are definitely with character rather then merely cute.

Kelvin Hastings-Smith's digital print, , of a baby's hand holding a large parental one particularly had both character and charm. The baby's wrist wore a pink woollen sleeve.

Theresa Millet's was a set of four baby photographs of character and without either excessive sentiment or excessive pink.

Joyce Beale showed her customary two batiks, both in her usual controlled, subdued colour schemes, this time warm browns that were just pink enough to pass. , the larger of the two I would have preferred in a different colour scheme, but the composition was stylish and the effect admirable. was more themed, being of a cute young girl looking directly out of the composition.

I have no doubt that the one work by my old friend Diana Tetlow, who is well aware of my pink phobia, was done deliberately to needle me. is a wince-pink take-off of the bizarre costume that led the parade at a recent Galliano show of men's fashions.

In its original version it was a mass of draped bits of coarse brown fabric covering the model's head and shoulders and sporting a pair of bull's horns.

Below the waist the model was swathed in similar bits of fabric and sported thick lengths of rope, obviously intended as phallic. Mrs. Tetlow has mercifully spared us these.

However, the pink Tetlow version could still be imagined as the worst nightmare of .