RT created in Bermuda by two giants of American modernism will be discussed at the Bermuda National Gallery next week.

Billed , the talk will be led by Donald Meyer, Masterworks' artist-in-residence.

The Philadelphia-based painter will discuss the impact the pair had on world art ? some of their best work was created over a six-week period while living in a hotel in St. George's.

"What Demuth and Hartley did here is absolutely pristine," he explained. "It's unbelievable stuff. Bermuda really helps to clear out your brain ? something I noticed on my journeys here years ago."

Mr. Meyer first travelled to the island in 1986, subsequently returning every year thereafter until 1992. He rekindled his ties recently, partnering with Masterworks through its artist-in-residence programme.

Time spent here will be devoted to his art and to various community activities including lectures at the Bermuda National Gallery, a workshop at the Masterworks Foundation and student talks at Warwick Academy.

A former accountant, Mr. Meyer said art had always been important to him.

A biographical sketch says: "One of the artist's earliest memories is sketching Lincoln's image from a penny. The artist's father, an internationally-known engineer, admired art and early indulged the child's interest by visits to the superlative collections in and around (Philadelphia)."

Mr. Meyer began exhibiting and selling in commercial galleries in the early 1970s and has consistently shown his work.

"After years struggling to define truly the meaning in his work, the artist re-emerged, tentatively entering well-juried competitions in the late '80s and early '90s, consistently winning honours. Encouraged, but still not entirely confident, the artist slowly refined an understanding of the central images in the work naming them the 'New World' or 'Americanist Paradigm'.

"In 1997 the artist had the opportunity to exhibit the first eight panels of a 12-panel suite of egg temperas, en suite in juried competition for the first time. It was awarded a prize: a juror cited 'wonderful application of medium, abstract quality, scale and emotional reaction'."

Greater successes followed including a 30-year retrospective of his work at the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College in 2002.

Mr. Meyer serves on several boards and at present, is vice-president of America's oldest artist organisation, The Philadelphia Sketch Club. Founded in 1860, many of its current and former members saw Bermuda as a place of inspiration ? Thomas Anshutz, Prosper Serat, Grant Miles Simon, Paul Jean Martel and Ronald Spicer, among them.

Mr. Meyer's work in Bermuda will involve three six-and-a-half-foot egg-tempera triptychs, each of which follows on the landscape and figural themes employed in his .

will feature slides of Bermuda works from the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia Museum and the Masterworks collections and will discuss the impact these giants of American modernism had on world art, painting, as Hartley wrote, "at the old barracks of a hotel, the old St. George's".