New Zealander Jacqui Kipfer is currently exhibiting forty-six colourful and joyous fantasy paintings in the Rose Garden Gallery of the Masterworks Foundation.

It has proven to be an exceedingly popular show. Indeed, at the opening it was difficult to even enter the gallery and the pace of the sales was phenomenal. At the end of the opening evening, October 20, all but eight of her paintings had already sold.

In her artist statement, Ms. Kipfer emphasised that for her colour is her passion. This is not difficult to understand since all her paintings are highly colourful, often in a most exaggerated manner. The same is true for her forms, which are sometimes like something out of a fairy-tale. For example, her buildings have a soft, almost soluable quality. Most of her paintings are based upon landscape, many depicting Bermuda scenes, although sometimes it takes a bit of guessing to pin-point the location. There is one of Mangrove Bay that at first I thought to be of a south Pacific atoll. Maybe this is an unconscious influence of Jacqui Kipfer's Pacific background. In suggesting this, however, it is not intended in any way to be a "put-down, but her view in this particular case is so spacious, that the tiny islets that are a few hundred yards out from Mangrove Bay, appear in her painting to be many miles away and considerably larger than they really are. Actually, it would be really wonderful if this were true. We could use a few extra square miles of territory. I approve of her use of imagination

It seems that her preferred media is acrylic paint, although occasionally she used pastel. Not only are her paintings colourful, her skies are obviously influenced by Vincent van Gogh. They are mostly swirls of coloured paint. I wondered however, what her work would be like if she employed thicker, more viscious oil paint, as did Van Gogh. Although her paintings are wonderfully coloured pictorial essays, I often found her paint jarringly thin. I was altogether too conscious of the underlying canvas. This may be a small matter, but I think that a greater attention to the surface quality of her paintings would result an perceptible improvement in her product.

All her picture frames are simple, straight-forward understatements, but I was a littler bothered by their colour - black. Mind you, black is not all that bad and I often use black frames myself, but given the intensity of the colours she uses, black seemed the wrong choice. I would have liked something more in keeping with her palette.

The exhibition continues through November 2.