As the call came for entries into the Charman Prize last year, the issues that made the news headlines started running through Cristina Douglas’s mind.

Belco, the fate of the Fairmont Southampton, a possible parking lot at Southlands and cliff erosion had everybody talking.

Ms Douglas started painting, confident that her work was a suitable response to the title offered by Masterworks, The Local Seen: Bermuda and Bermudians in the Modern World.

“I was thinking of what we're seeing and what's happening to our beautiful Bermuda, and I love surrealism, so I painted a surrealistic picture,” she said.

Time’s Up??, her acrylic on canvas, depicts an hourglass with a map of Bermuda at the top. A whirlpool below the island leads to images of all the issues that were swirling through Ms Douglas’s mind.

“[The title asks] can we fix this? Are we running ourselves into the ground? So in the painting I have an hourglass. Bermuda is at the top floating, and then you have a tornado, a waterspout, and that goes down through the neck of time, the hourglass, down to the bottom,” she said.

“And at the bottom of the tornado is basically everything that's happening to our island. We've got plastic trash, pollution from Belco. We have no money, so we’ve got promises of things that haven't come through….”

Bitcoin, gambling chips, King Edward VII Memorial Hospital and Fairmont Southampton are all part of the 36 by 24in image created by the art teacher at Mount Saint Agnes Academy.

Houses on the cliffs in the background are meant to be Southlands.

“My painting depicts the intricate balancing act Bermudians face: the tumultuous currents of pollution, land contracts, the allure of bitcoin and gambling,” reads Ms Douglas’s artist statement.

“It juxtaposes stalled developments with the unspoilt charm of our landscapes, reflecting our resilience in the face of greed's undertow.

“Captured is the harmony between progress and preservation, mirroring the island's essence – the enduring spirit of its people and their commitment to safeguarding the island's timeless charm while navigating turbulent tides of change.”

The work isn’t meant to be political. “There are Bermudians underneath the hourglass trying to steady it and they’re all caught in the pothole,” she said.

Two Belco stacks and a palm tree are the only things holding the hourglass up.

“One of them is a palm tree because we're hoping to keep our beautiful island and then what the Bermudians are trying to do is get out of the hole and steady the glass, so that that marble that's at the top part of the hourglass comes and rolls down to hit the neck and then to make everything calm again.”

The marble idea came from an 1872 design that used glass marbles and rubber gaskets to keep drinks carbonated.

“That was in relation to our water bottles, those glass bottles that we find in the ocean that have a little marble in them,” Ms Douglas said.

“All of this was in my head since January last year. I'm a teacher so I just drew sketches in my sketchbook when I had time. I didn't actually start putting paint to canvas until July when I was on vacation.”

By August she was finished.

“Like all Bermudians I love Bermuda and I think we're all worried about our climate, the pollution, the fact that we don't have money in the budget, and this has been ongoing for years. Our birth rate is down – I don't know what the future holds for us to be honest.

“But, I didn't want it to be all doom and gloom. I tried to put some light colours in there and show the blue water; the fact that people are trying to lift the hourglass out of out of the hole.”

The Charman Prize opened to the public on December 16. Ms Douglas found it “very interesting” to see the ways that each artist portrayed their take on “the local seen”.

“I think the show is amazing because everybody took that title [and expressed it so differently].”

She used that to show her students that there was “never one answer” in any situation.

“There's so many different artists, there's so many different ideas. It's such an amazing show,” she said.

“We work to our strengths and I had a point to put across, so I put it across. But then you've got people that related [the local seen] to the good things in Bermuda. I was in a negative place I guess.

“But I'm very proud of that piece. It's gotten a lot of people that I know talking about it and it's relevant to the times.”

In the 2022 Charman Prize artists were invited to submit work that put Bermuda in the context of the global pandemic.

Ms Douglas painted a person wearing a mask and a bodysuit atop a tiny rock in the Atlantic.

“She had Covid in her hair; she was half black, half white. It [represented how] we couldn't talk, we couldn't do anything, we couldn't go anywhere.

“We were on a beautiful island but we couldn't do anything. We were all in a straitjacket. I related it to how I read the topic.”

People have responded well to Time’s Up??

“There’s been a lot of positive feedback. [People seem to like] that I seem to get a lot of the issues that Bermuda is facing right now in the piece of work.

“But I really think everybody should see the show because of the artists giving such different answers to the actual title of it.

“I think it's fascinating. Most of the work is amazing. Mine may not be one that somebody else likes, but they like the one that's sitting next to me on the wall.”

Ms Douglas hopes that she is soon able to create and display more of her art, but for right now, she’s “busy”.

“I teach. When do I have time? But I would like to do another show.”

• The Charman Prize is on display at Masterworks Museum of Bermuda art until March 31. For more information, visit https://masterworksbermuda.org/charman-prize/