together for the sixth time at the Society of Arts Gallery in City Hall is a group called Growing.

Like most associations of working artists, the bond is loose. With this particular group the interest lies, not in similarity of approach, but rather the opposite: the result is an array of very strong work by some of our most professional artists that is distinguished by its contrast each from the other.

After the fluctuating standards of recent Society of Arts shows, there is a real pleasure in consistently fine work on every wall. Paul Doughty has served a visual double whammy, his pieces of sculpture backed up by a series of abstract paintings that continue his examination of and spatial relationships.

Using flat and brilliant colours, these paintings shout for attention.

Unlike his last show at Dockyard, Paul Doughty's sculptures on this occasion are small -- some of a size that would fit in the hand, and as he has used black African wonderstone that has a soft, dull sheen, the tactile attraction is of significance. These four pieces that represent the human form are constantly fascinating, Extrapolation especially, evolving into different dimensions, forms and even characters as it is viewed from various angles, as does, to a lesser extent, the beautifully crafted female nude. A more abstract approach is seen in the limestone Harp of Life and The Phantom, both employing Hepworthian holes that approximate these shapes, the latter bearing a distinct likeness to that operatic mask.

At first, and even at second glance, Kris Jensen, back with the group after a long absence, seems overpowered by her four colleagues. Her watercolour paintings, mainly of flowers, are small, meticulous compositions, employing delicate and softly brushed colour. It seemed a mistake to place them in amongst the more flamboyant styles of the other artists. These finely realised blooms do, however, serve as a foil, and on reflection, probably add a balance to the overall impact of the show. Her occasional still life and roof studies indicate a feeling for form and perspective that might be pursued more fully.

Sheilagh Head is in top form: painting after painting, a sheer celebration of Bermuda's summer beauty, personified in shifts and shafts of hot sunlight piercing flowers and grasses in radiant and luscious colours. Nowhere is this more apparent than in her Peppercorn Garden, with its shady path leading enticingly into a cascade of summer blooms, and in Lily Field where wild, white Easter lilies burst from a tangle of grass lit by a halo of golden light.

Yet her skies also seem to dominate in this exhibition. Who else but Sheilagh Head could so audaciously mix yellow and lilac and still achieve a result that is essentially tranquil? The canvases of Pale Waters and South Light are filled with great expanses of pearly lilac sky and are among the most beautiful she has painted. Rocks and Dockyard is intriguing, horizontal brush strokes of brighter colours and splashes of brown with something of a Homeresque touch. And Old Wreck is, perhaps, the new quintessential Head, where realism recedes and impressionism almost fades into the abstract.

Colourwise, Elmer Midgett is in strident mood, his exterior studies legitimately earning the cachet of plein air paintings as they capture the intensity of Bermuda's summer sun and compensating shadows. There is something endearing about the way he is content to paint almost anything that catches his eye. It might well be the spectacular ocean view from his Somerset home, but it is just as likely to be a corner of the yard and the homely objects lying about, such as a green plastic garden hose, seeping water on to a dusty path, his humorous Flop Off, being an impromptu study of his bright blue summer footwear.

Elmer Midgett's powerful landscapes reveal a preoccupation with the forms of bending casuarinas and silhouettes of aggressively textured rocks.

But it is the minutae of his paintings that appeal, especially in The Last Tomato, where the sun beats down on the single gleaming fruit that holds centre stage amidst a circle of wilting daisies.

Charles Zuill is the most difficult artist of the group to define. While his work is abstract, highly intellectual and speaking from a distance of cool, geometric form, it is rooted in the earth. For some time now, he has been working with Bermuda sand, ground and mixed with acrylic paint in earth colours, sometimes offset with surrounds or panels of gold leaf.

In Quake, the the sand runs in textured fissures, in Veil the sand trickles down like delicate layers of lace. Just a few moments spent in front of one of these works evokes an almost mesmeric awareness of the Island's burnished earth tones.

A man of versatility, Dr. Zuill's Starry Night and Tree is a collage of found objects, hinting of a tree silhouette against a strip of metal, the globules of rust appearing as dappled stars. And his magnificent circular `swirl' painting, Greenberg, belongs, I suppose, to geometric op art, where the evolving shades of misty green spin, albeit restfully about a crested point.

PATRICIA CALNAN KRUZENSTERN -- The Russian tall ship at Dockyard, captured in oils by Sheilagh Head and forming part of the current group show, Growing, at City Hall.