biennial exhibition which opens to the public at the City Hall Gallery on Saturday.

This will be the sixth show since the group formed in 1984, and although the make-up of the group changes from time to time, this year is something of a reunion for four of them who originally joined forces to stage Lightworks back in 1982.

Paul Doughty, Kris Jensen, Sheilagh Head and Elmer Midgett will be joined this year by Charles Zuill.

The idea of a group, where artists work, exhibit and most important of all, talk together about their work, is the modern outcome of the old, formal `schools' of painting which dominated the development of art from the time of the medieval guilds to the threshold of the 19th century.

Perhaps the most famous `group' was the French Impressionists who broke away from the inflexible rules of academic teaching.

There should be plenty of variety in this exhibition, with five very different artists working in various media.

Paul Doughty, who attended Parsons School of Design in New York, majoring in sculpture, will be showing four pieces in this show and four paintings in watercolour and gouache. He says that his major influences include Michelangelo, the Greeks, Rodin and Henry Moore.

Materials used in Mr. Doughty's sculpture, include stone and wood.

He says: "I sometimes use steel, as well. When it's carved and constructed, it sometimes has the effect of something that looks vaguely familiar but hard to place. My sculptures combine organic form with geometric forms to emphasise two-dimensional flatness against three dimensional form.'' Mr. Doughty has exhibited in New York, and with the Bermuda Society of Arts and at the Arts Centre at Dockyard.

Kris Jensen focuses mainly on floral images, painted in watercolours, in which she takes the viewer for a close-up view of flowering forms.

Her interest in this branch of painting probably arose from the childhood environment of her family's florist/nursery business. After studying botany at college, she found a niche where she was able to combine both art and science by becoming a scientific illustrator, working with natural history museums in the US, including the Smithsonian in Washington.

Mrs. Jensen came to Bermuda 15 years ago to work at the Bermuda Biological Station and to illustrate Wolfgang Sterrer's book, Fauna and Flora of Bermuda.

It was then that she was invited to join the Lightworks show and she says she is delighted to be back with most of them again, in Growing.

Sheilagh Head, who in the sense that she loves to paint the same scene over and over again in all its moods, is Bermuda's Monet, will be exhibiting oils that are figurative impressions of Bermuda's landscape and shifting seasons.

While she cites Bonnard as an artist who has influenced her colours and Whistler for "painting the spirit of things'' there can be little doubt that Sheilagh Head captures the spirit of Bermuda.

She studied painting and sculpture at L'Accademia de Belle Arte in Perugia, Italy, and afterwards at Manchester College of Art.

Mrs. Head, who has lived on the Island for over 20 years, believes that an artist working in Bermuda has to spend sufficient time here "to see the orchestrations and chords that go to make up the intense colours.'' Elmer Midgett, who also works in oils, received his degree in Fine Arts from Virginia Wesleyan College and began his professional career working in stained glass. His work is to be seen in several North Carolina churches as well as several commissions for private homes in Bermuda.

Since 1987 he has concentrated on painting and in 1990, one of his works was selected for Bermuda's London show at the Mall Galleries.

In this show, he says he will be concentrating on trees, in and around Dockyard and Somerset, as well as his distinctive interiors and garden studies.

Dr. Charles Zuill, who is Professor of Art at Bermuda College, and one of Bermuda's leading modernists, grew up in Smith's Parish where his family had long been farmers.

He says: "Although my work is rather abstract, there is, I think, obvious references to the land and sea. In recent years the destruction of the natural environment has also begun to become of greater and greater importance in my work and I suspect will play an even greater role in what I do in the future.'' Dr. Zuill, whose uncompromisingly abstract pictures adorn the more avant garde walls of Bermuda, has recently been creating works utilising Island soil and sand.

GROWING GANG -- Artwork by Mrs. Kris Jensen (left), Mr. Elmer Midgett and Mrs.

Sheilagh Head (right) will be on show in their exhibition called Growing.

Missing from the picture are fellow-artists Dr. Charles Zuill and Mr. Paul Doughty.