In future years, John Borg Manduca’s canvases will be retained as a memory of an island’s lost and annihilated patrimony, says Richard England.
The essential quality of John Borg Manduca as an artist is that in all of his body of works he has consistently chosen to avoid being a follower of current fashionable ‘-isms’, or of conforming or adhering to any pseudo-intellectual trendy art movement. On the contrary he has used his imaginative creativity to poetically interpret his much loved sun-baked native land and its surrounding seascape in all of its moods, in canvases which one could term dreamscapes of reverie.
It is in these dancing marine canvases depicting seas, at times calm and at times menacing, that the artist excels.
The varying moods of our history-laden surrounding Middle Sea more so in its tenacious, visceral ’grigal’ moments, exploding on steadfast coastal rocks that provide Borg Manduca with an inspirational mindset which he then ably transfers to his dexterous ability to portray the forceful and momentous collision of turbulent liquid with solid mass.
Borg Manduca also depicts his seas in other moods, at times agitated by angry storms, at times ignited by aureate sunbeams and at others stilled and dimmed by the eclipsed darkness of moonless nights. On viewing his seascape canvases it is obvious the artist has a particular empathy with the kaleidoscopic nature of the sea, in all alchemies of its disparate moods. He remains above all a visual poet of the architecture of the sea and the dance of its waves.
Borg Manduca holds two major artists as his major mentors, influences and references. The 19th century Russian Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900), a marine artist of Armenian origin, whose stormy waters realistically depicted with intense drama have had a definitive effect on the local artist’s creativity. Another artist whose work has definitely shaped Borg Manduca’s paintings is the eminent British artist Joseph Mallord Turner (1775-1851) with his magical chromatic spectrum of operatic skies, ebullient clouds, incandescent seas, and evanescent colours. Both these artists together with the works of the Impressionists remain the dominating influences in all of Borg Manduca’s artistic expressions.
Apart from his marine dancing seascapes Borg Manduca is also a successful delineator of the architecture of the sunlit stones and shadowed streets of our island’s townscapes. In his urban depictions he combines light and shadow with panache and vivacity in an alchemistic manner to convey the geometric power of the island’s limestone vernacular architecture. With his romantic visions of local townscapes, Borg Manduca assumes the role of a mnemonic helmsman of a now fast-vanishing heritage. In future years his canvases will be retained as a memory of an island’s lost and annihilated patrimony.
Particularly worthy of note is Borg Manduca’s brief but paramount collaborative venture with the Scottish Concrete-Poet artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. His dexterous palette knife images of land and seas war machines, in combination with Finlay’s succinct verbal aphorisms provided potent allegorical and metaphorical artistic amalgams.
Borg Manduca’s ethereal town and seascapes bathed in liquefied xanthic tones, not only transform, but transcend reality. With his deft palette strokes he creates art works allowing their observers enchanting poetic glimpses, much needed magical antidotes to today’s vespertine soulless life patterns. For his delectable contribution to the local art scene and his imaginative vision we owe him both our admiration and gratification.
Richard England is a Maltese architect, writer, artist and academic. He is also a sculptor, photographer, poet, artist and author. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Malta, having acted as Dean of the Faculty of Architecture between 1987 and 1989. He is also an Hon. Fellow at the University of Bath in the UK, and an Academician and Vice-President of the International Academy of Architecture.
This review was first published in the 2020 edition of Perry Estate Agents magazine.