'New Paintings of Old Bermuda' was the title of a show of works by Johanna Flath at the Interim Gallery on the corner of King and Reid Streets. The paintings were presented as being done from old slides that had suffered the inevitable damage from mildew that such things get in our damp island. I went to the show with some trepidation, as paintings done from photographs tend to be stiff and wooden when people are the subject. Ms Flath's show turns out to be much more interesting.

Less than half the subject photographs were represented in the final works; the rest were the working drawings, sketches and "overlap" studies. The latter were pencil drawings where more than one idea was tested using a study technique akin to the cinematic bleed, in effect a layered transparency. The drawing is strong and clean, the results surprisingly clear and the treatment both original and very lively.

Equally lively and fresh were studies in marker pen on paper. These are just as lively and have the added dimension of vivid colour used quite sparingly with plenty of white space to supply impact and life to the works. There is a sense of immediacy imparted to the usual rather arranged poses of family photographs both then (the 1950s) and now, along with the inevitable "smile for the camera" smiles of those posed for the occasion. Transferred to canvas or paper, these can easily turn into grimaces.

Unfortunately this lively sense tends to get lost in the finished oils and watercolours. The oils tend to be chalky and flat and the watercolours dull and without the panache of the drawings. Ms Flath's drawing is bold, confident and crisp, having something of the power usually found in cartoons. Her painting, however, tends to be rather drawn than painted leading to some very awkward faces in particular.

This mars one of the best of the oils, 'Trunk Island Bathers', whose faces in the four studies for the work are so extremely different that they might have been separate groups if the poses and clothes were not the same. My perpetual complaint, a lack of anatomical study, also mars these works. The limbs seem flat and without form, let alone structure; the hands and feet vary from nervously skimped to catastrophic as in 'August Shade at Whale Bay' where the artist's difficulty with foreshortening leaves two of the subjects looking badly deformed.

This tendency to simplification, unfortunate with hands and feet, gives life and form to the best of the oils, 'Wash Day'. This is a clothesline strung with white sheets and towels, all reduced to their basic windblown shapes, the whole composition counterbalanced by the cast shadows on the grass.

Otherwise, for me at least, the star turns in this show were the 'Overlap' studies, particularly #3, and three very fine works in pencil. Good strong pencil drawing is not often to be found in galleries today, being largely out of style locally. It is always a delight, therefore, to find such good ones as these. They are studies for 'Four Girls', 'Family Portrait' and 'Trunk Island Bathers'. Fine texturing, confident use of the medium, and balanced composition inform all three of them. Interestingly they were the only three works not for sale.

There is great talent and considerable originality to be found in this show, but least in the most prominently featured work. Ms Flath is still very young (hence her rather endearing notion that what to me is the day before yesterday constitutes "Old Bermuda") and her undoubted graphic talent and her original approach, when bolstered by experience and perhaps some more study will very probably produce another fine artist in the Island.

ANDREW TRIMINGHAM