Bermuda Arts Centre at Dockyard -- Until November 10 Finch and Finch.

The names are suggestive of an old Vaudevillian comedy duo, though there is nothing at all funny about the very serious talent of this winning father and daughter team.

John Finch, a Swiss-born artist whose focus in recent years has been on antique modes of transport, is quite brilliant at this task anyway, summoning with his paintings a great wealth of nostalgia and true sentiment for his subjects, even among those who are obviously too young to remember them first-hand.

His daughter, Carolyn, is an equally skillful artist, her palette a rich and affecting melange of light and colour and depth.

In this sense, the artists, who both exhibit an affinity for the medium of gouache in their first dual show, are suitably well-matched, since both appear to be romantics at heart, though each of them also displays the sharp and unwavering eye of a closet photorealist.

Mr. Finch's work, which depicts the great liners and flying boats of yesteryear to the tiniest detail, is the most overtly photographic of this synchronistic pair.

In his representations of various sailing vessels, for instance, many of even the smallest riggings and fixtures have been deftly and accurately rendered, while the flying boat paintings -- each of which has a wide-eyed and obviously awestruck appreciation for the beasts -- almost universally provide a ringside (or should I say wingside) perspective on their glory.

More than just accurate depictions, however, Mr. Finch's works have a subtle but achingly romantic air of melancholy to them that makes each of his paintings a rich and valuable window onto a number of lost worlds, and lost ways of life.

Attuned in particular to the many contrasts that a lot of his subjects inspire -- contrasts between the old and the new, the opulence of the past (from sailboats to steamships to liners) and the breathless excitement of "progress'' -- Mr. Finch has captured in such splendid accomplishments as " The Cavalier Salutes The Queen '' and "Sail Before Steam'' a manifestation of ideals that incorporated transportation but involved much more than that -- and an idyllic Bermuda of which such manifestations were integrally a part.

In a similar but nonetheless different way, Carolyn Finch has also captured an idealised Bermuda in her work, choosing such vistas as charming little footbridges or lonely stretches of coast to portray and focussing on each with a clear and seemingly untainted eye.

In the younger Finch's work, the Island is depicted as both a secret English garden of some sublimely earthly delights (the rich and evocative "Railway Trail'') and indeed a veritable Eden (the marvellously primeval "Blue Hole'').

As such, they serve as lovely and rather effective counterpoints to the paintings of her father: while Mr. Finch pere has conveyed the many wonderful but now-lost vessels that used to bring visitors to Bermuda, his daughter has depicted, beautifully and cleanly, why those visitors came.

Displayed alongside the "Finch and Finch'' exhibition, in a show entitled "The ReTurn of David Mitchell: Bowls to Turn Your Head For,'' is a small but exquisite collection of fine turned bowls.

Simple, elegant pieces of a high waxy lustre and a multitude of shapes, Mr.

Mitchell's bowls are universally appealing -- silken in appearance and lovely of form and finish.

Particularly handsome are both of his smaller "Bay Grape Bowls'' (each of which are perfect in their simplicity, calling to mind solidified honey, sweet and highly alluring) and the large similarly-entitled one (a finished free-form vessel that is almost shell-like in its roundedness and shine).

In short, the bowls that Mr. Mitchell has fashioned are far too pretty for anyone to eat from, more a feast for the eyes than the kind to put a feast in.

And they will, no doubt, turn more than just a few heads.

By DANNY SINOPOLI