Finding light in darkness is the theme of a new show opening at Masterworks this weekend.

The exhibit entitled ?Recent Work by Cynthia Kirkwood? opens tonight and will run until August 31.

The show is comprised of oil paintings ? many of which were completed in Vermont.

A: Nothing specific. I?m really not sure. The idea of setting a blank canvas on an easel and choosing colours and working the paint with clean brushes ? it?s the entire challenge of painting that inspires me. I can also say that presently it is ?colour? that engages me most firmly. The subject matter in these paintings is usually more a vehicle for playing and struggling with colour than anything else.

A: There is no theme. Nothing planned at least. These last couple years have been quite dark and complicated for me, and it seems I looked to paint pictures that were clear and simple and uplifting. So that spending time at my easel was sort of like taking a holiday in a distant place, away from the heaviness of some recent personal circumstances.

A: Oil paint. Old Holland oil paint. When pigment is suspended in oil the light can reach it easily and the pigment is actually enhanced, and the higher quality the paint, the more the colour will glow. Some people paint with acrylic because it dries faster and the ?clean-up? is easier.

I have never been in a hurry for my paintings to dry and I don?t mind washing my brushes in odourless paint thinner as opposed to water. But the real issue is the paint. The painting. The colour. Light cannot penetrate a layer of acrylic, which is essentially plastic, the way it can with oil paint. So acrylic is relatively dull.

I have tried it. Even a wooden sign painted with oil based enamel will sing out a lot more than one in acrylic. And it will last longer. Acrylic is better if you need to paint on paper though ? to make Christmas cards or something. Oil will weaken the structure of the paper over time unless it?s primed well.

A: I do paint outdoors. I?ve also gone outdoors to sketch and draw and then taken the pencil stuff back into the studio and painted from that. This particular group of paintings, however, were done indoors with plenty of light. Always in the daytime. The palette depends more on my imagination than on anything else. Natural light is better. There is no discussion. No comparison between the sun and an electric light bulb.

A: I have no predictable routine. I paint when I can. During the last ten years there have been long stretches when I have been too busy working to paint, to busy worrying about work, worrying about paying the rent. Time to be creative is a luxury ? it may be a necessity for good health, both mental and physical, which are symbiotic, but it is still a luxury.

A: I left New York City last year and moved to Vermont where I have some spare time for the first time in ages.

A: Yes, but it?s been a while. I had work in a few Bermuda Society of Arts? group shows. I had a couple of shows at the Dockyard Arts Centre. Back in the early 90s, I can?t remember when exactly.

A: In my last show the subject of the work was more important to me. I was painting these cryptic shapes to symbolise psychological dynamics and archetypes ? like a colourful code. Hieroglyphics in their own landscape. Completely abstract.

Before that I was working outdoors and painting portraits of individual trees, quiet landscapes. So painting becomes autobiography ? the chapters illustrate what was important or fascinating to the artist at the time.

Maybe it never changes. Maybe it never stops....

One of my favourite painters is Giorgio Morandi. He painted arrangements of dusty bottles on a table for his entire life. He never left Bologna, where he was born, lived with his sisters and taught at the university.

I admire the depth he achieved, a religious depth, by painting the same subject and gaining ? well I imagine he gained an understanding of the universe, his own psyche and the universe, like a meditation.

A: I was born in Zurich to Canadian parents and we moved to Bermuda when I was three. So I was raised here in Bermuda.

A: I have always been painting. I majored in Fine Art at Middlebury College in Vermont. After that I studied painting at the New York Studio School for two years and then I went to Italy to be near Piero Della Francesca?s frescoes, in Umbria, and I stayed there and painted for two years. That was paradise ? the food too. I finally learned how to cook.

I had no choice. I needed to know how to make the things I was eating. Of course they depended a lot on the fresh local ingredients.

Choice ingredients ? just like the question of what kind of paint to use.

A: Some took months and others days. The group as a whole took about a year.

A: They are smaller than usual, these paintings ? a lot are only 9x12 or 16x20. I think there will be about around 40 paintings.

A: Everyone is creative in their own way ? a banker can be creative in his work ? or maybe he has a vegetable garden and he?s more creative with that.

Any creative activity is hard work ? it requires honesty and courage. If you know what you?re doing and it?s easy, it?s not creative. So it doesn?t matter so much what you are doing as how you do it.

It sounds like an awful clich?, but I think life is art or can be. And ideally art is giving. Giving what you have to the world ? and the more honest you are, the more vulnerable you feel, but your gift will circle back to you ? like love. I think teaching children is art.

In my mind art is something pure, divine really.

I have a difficult time with conceptual art ? it always has these neat explanations. I think art is a mystery.

A: Daily life is basically an evolving combination of different activities and I would never be able to rate them numerically. But, as well as painting, I can say I love to write. I write in a journal, I write short stories, letters. I love to sit at a table with a cartridge pen and paper and just write.