Art for Christmas Giving at the Lighthouse Restaurant Showcase

IT is unusual when the outstanding works in an art show are not paintings.This, however, is the case at Art for Christmas Giving at the Lighthouse Restaurant, a show that opened last Sunday. Milton Hill's Bermuda and the Sea Series has gained in sophistication and in the quality of the work since I last saw it. His cedar plaques are elegantly hollowed to present a concave setting for his finely wrought traditional sailboats.

In this show he has used our new training schooner Spirit of Bermuda <$>as his inspiration for several of his carvings, now executed with greater refinement than I remember from previous shows.

The others include a number of traditional Bermuda rigged sailboats and one taken from the Devonshire logo of the Maritime Museum. The fine quality of the carving and the effectiveness of the concave mountings make these an excellent possibility for special interest giving at Christmas.

My only rather mild cavil is that setting three boats or a single one would make for better composition than Mr. Hill's tendency to mount two boats together on a single plaque.

Lindsey George's clayboard engravings catch the eye from across the room with dramatic if somewhat eerie effect. The clayboard technique involves etching the black surface of the board to expose the white below. It allows for extremely fine detail and the result leans toward a theatrical effect.

Her Frogfly <$>series of six etchings is exquisitely detailed and imaginatively composed. They depict tree frogs with decorative, translucent wings in various poses and activities and the result has much of the slightly sinister effect of fine traditional, fairytale illustration. Any of them would make a perfect gift for an imaginative child or, indeed, an imaginative adult.

Apart from one of Deirdre Furtado's splendid if frenzied banana dolls, improbably cast for the season as Angels, <$>the rest of the show is given over to relatively small paintings.

Christopher Grimes seems to have abandoned his penchant for reproducing old Bermuda postcards and has joined the landscape brigade. A preference for views from high vantage points can lead painters into dull panoramas, but not Mr. Grimes.

Paget Palm <$>sets the single eponymous palm against a shoreline far below and the effect is remarkably good. It does follow the recent palm tree lead of Jonah Jones already followed by several other artists, but is none the worse for that. View from Scaur Hill adopts an equally lofty viewpoint and is almost equally successful.

Quite different and very unusual is his Thomas Moore Statue. This is a portrait of a portrait in another medium of the briefly resident Irish poet and comes off with dramatic aplomb. I can think of few other such works and its sheer singularity gives it a special interest, as does the quality of its setting and colour scheme.

The paintings of Christopher Marson in this show are a bit of a mixed bag. Springfield Noon is one of three watercolours in the artist's best tradition, as is Northshore Palms<$>. Summer Storm<$>, however, comes off as a bit stolid by comparison with his usual very high standard.

Of the two oils, Southshore<$> was informed with the spare treatment uniquely mastered by Mr. Marson, but Grape Bay <$>seemed laboured and overpainted.

There is plenty in this show to tempt the Christmas spirit and the best of the show will likely acquire red dots quite rapidly, particularly as everything seemed very competitively priced.