he Masterworks Foundation?s current artist-in-residence, Lynda Shalagan is presently exhibiting her paintings in the West gallery at the Foundation?s headquarters in the Botanical Gardens.

There is something appealing and genuine about Ms Shalagan?s paintings. Her work is somewhere between abstraction and reality and she has a good sense of design and composition, but her work never appears to be contrived.

Although her colours are often somewhat exaggerated, they work with her unique views of ordinary scenes of Bermuda, mostly from around St. George?s.

The very first painting in the show is, however, an abstract. It is entitled, ?Between the Lines?. Even this painting though, appears to be based upon architecture.

Indeed, there is something architectonic about most of the paintings.

The paintings in this show are either fairly large or very small and she employs several different techniques in making them.

Most of her larger paintings are in oil paint, but even here she uses two different methods of painting.

Most are fairly direct paintings of simplified landscapes, but at least two others are technically more complicated, in that she works into the paintings with layers of scumbled paint. From this latter camp, I noted the painting entitled, ?Joyce?s Gate?.

Of her first, direct approach, I see in them reminders of the Precisionist School, the best known exponent from this group being Charles Demuth, who incidentally, painted here is Bermuda the winter of 1917.

Of Ms Shalagan?s other approach, the use of layered scumbles; these are reminiscent of certain paintings by David Hockney, the contemporary English painter who is usually associated with Pop Art. With ?Joyce?s Gate?, I find her approach similar to the work of Hockney, not only by the use of layers of scumbled paint, but also by the colours she uses.

The smaller works in the show are technically more diverse. Some are straightforward oil paintings, others are in pastel, but there is a third approach to depicting her vision. These are collages of coloured paper.

The smaller works often appear to be studies for the larger paintings At the very West end of the gallery, there is a display of enchanting, tiny creations by school children, who have exchanged work between the Bermuda High School for Girls and the Sacred Heart School of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

This exchange was made possible through the efforts of Ms Shalagan, who in her ordinarily life, is a teacher at the Sacred Heart School.

This exchange project is to be commended, for not only is it imaginative, the work has all the appeal that is so characteristic of the art of children. Children often have fresh, original views of life and place that are expressed with sincerity and honesty. That is what makes their art so wonderfully delightful.

The exhibition ended yesterday.