and Computer Generated Art The Bermuda Society of Arts, City Hall, Hamilton A show of new talent - that's what's being offered by the Bermuda Society of Arts in this latest exhibition. But does it live up to the promise or should the Society be sued under the Trades Description Act? Well, looking down the list of names of artists on the price list it's true to say that the majority of people exhibiting here are doing so for the first time -- their names are certainly unfamiliar to me.

New kids on the block they may be -- but are they talented? Well, I have to report that, quite frankly, no, I don't think they are.

I don't want to single any one individual out so a few examples of the notes I made as I walked around the gallery will give you a flavour of what I saw and felt. "Badly drawn... no sense of perspective... muddy... childish. .. sludge... sentimental...''.

I could go on but I think you'll get the message. This is of course a bit of a generalisation and there are one or two paintings here that show promise.

Andrea Smith has five pictures on display. I won't talk about the first four but the fifth, an oil portrait of a young girl entitled `My Princess', was cleverly composed and well painted, capturing the wide eyed innocence of youth without being sentimental or twee.

Jason Jones is obviously someone who is not new to his particular medium, in this case a combination of acrylic and enamel paint.

He also has five pieces of work on display and they are all very striking and quite different.

I don't know how he achieves the effects he does but there is a luminosity, sharpness and clarity to his work. `Morning I', a close-up of a few drops of dew on a plant stem is particularly beautiful while `Meddling Kid' is full of energy.

Unfortunately for the BSOA, Jason isn't really a new kid any more. I can remember being similarly impressed with four eye-catching paintings he submitted at the Society's last show.

Anything else that shows the slightest sign of talent, a slow burning ember of artistic genius waiting to break free, even a small flicker of potential? No not much. Karen North's `Still Life with Bottle and Bowl' was nicely composed and the sunlight in Barbara Cuoco's `Florrie's Gate' was well rendered but that's about your lot.

This exhibition consists of nearly fifty pictures by 13 different artists but, from what is on show here, there's not much budding talent that's about to blossom into a thriving art scene.

Now I've said in the past that I think people should be encouraged to paint.

If you enjoy it, as I do, then that's great. But I think it's wrong for people to be trumpeted as potentially promising painters when it's clear they have no talent whatsoever. I'm afraid it's the Emperor's new clothes syndrome.

The reason I play golf is quite simply because I enjoy it. But I'm the first to admit that I have no talent for the game at all and if somebody started promoting me as a bright new talent, one to watch for the future I would laugh in their face. The same can be said for a lot of what's on show here.

Which brings me to the second part of this exhibition -- computer generated artwork. I wonder why the Society decided to run two completely different shows in the same hall at the same time. Was it because, such is the dirth of new talent out there, they needed something else to fill up the space? I have no idea how some of this computer imagery is produced. For example what on earth is a photo computer manipulation? Can some bloke sitting at a computer twiddling a few knobs be called an artist? I don't know, but there are some wonderful images here nevertheless.

`Judgment Day', a digitally enhanced photo by Victoria Evans Kargacos, is suitably unnerving with it's dark, threatening sky while Colin Murdoch's `NY I', a black and white digital, presents us with a standard theme, the busy streets of New York, in a new way. Both these exhibitions run until October 9.

Gareth Finighan ARTIST ART REVIEW REV