‘Katarin I’ve brought you a dorado’ or ‘Katarin ġibtlek lampuka’ in Maltese is the first line of an age-old ditty that talks about a man who brought a dorado home for his wife to cook. This chant is the subject of one of 14 watercolours Paul Caruana is exhibiting at the Cittadella, in Victoria, until November 29.

Fatta. The Excitement of Winning the House

Although this dorado song gives the impression that the man bought a lampuka for the wife to cook, in Caruana’s representation, the woman had already cooked dinner and the man gets told off instead of getting a peck on the cheek.

“My better half still recites this song,” Caruana says.

“Incidentally, she’s called Catherine. I did not just interpret the rhyme here…  her facial expression when she hears her husband telling her to cook the fish, after she had already cooked dinner, says it all. Rings any bell,” he quips.

Hawn u Hemm – Here and There is the Valletta artist’s 14th solo exhibition but his first one in Gozo. It’s actually his second one ‘overseas’ as he had exhibited in Moscow, Russia, in 1985.

Caruana’s nostalgic paintings help viewers revisit happy moments like when, together with his wife, they sauntered along Lunzjata Valley or the morning they walked past the chapel of St Cecilia on their way to Xemxija from Mġarr road and happened upon growers picking tomatoes.

“Tomatoes has been on my to-do list for many years,” Caruana says.

“The stretch of fields that lead the eye to the Xewkija rotunda is just magnificent. I am not a landscape painter per se but I wanted to paint the hard-working Gozitans who still till the land.”

Artist Paul Caruana

Caruana couldn’t help but add a couple of snapshots of life in St Joseph Street, at the lower end of Valletta, where he grew up

He also captures the day they made their way to Ramla l-Ħamra before day break and were enthralled by the silence and colours around them. The result is a painting titled Apostles.

One of the sites he was sure he wanted to portray was that of Dwejra, in which he gives a different perspective of the now lost but iconic Azure Window, which would leave him spellbound.

The exhibition also features episodes from Caruana’s life when he was courting Catherine. Early in the morning he’d rush to catch the bus to Ċirkewwa because he did not have a car then. He would also have to rush back home.

“Crossing the Channel is dedicated to those who rode the waves on vessels like Melitaland, the flat-bottomed ferry boats used back then,” Caruana says.

Crossing the Channel

“I used to catch the last ferry home from Gozo, at 5pm. Who can forget the rolling, the ramps shuddering when waves hit them and standing ready to run like hell to catch a bus when the boat docked at Ċirkewwa? If you didn’t catch a bus you had to walk all the way to Mellieħa. Taxis were expensive.”

A painting titled Il-wilġa features a place “people from Xewkija know well”.

“My in-laws used to live just opposite the place. I spent many hours just looking at this view, the gate leading to fields and views of the seas. I sketched and painted the gate many times,” he notes.

And then there’s Birilli, about an old game that fascinates the artist and which is still played in Għarb on Sunday mornings.

Caruana couldn’t help but add a couple of snapshots of life in St Joseph Street, at the lower end of Valletta, where he grew up.

Fresh fish. Raffling saddled bream in St Joseph Street, Valletta.

Fresh Fish shows a man holding a plateful of saddled bream urging neighbours to get a raffle ticket before he picks the winning number out of a cloth bag. The winner would take the plateful of saddled bream home and avoid having to get a dorado for Katarin who instead of a compliment would give him a piece of her mind.

And Fatta portrays a group of women who would invariably play bingo outdoors in his street in the hot summer months. “I included these paintings just for the sake of showing the other side of life in Valletta,” Caruana notes.

The exhibition runs at the Cittadella, Victoria, from Monday to Sunday between 9am and 5pm.

The Window landmark in Gozo that is no more