A love for the Maltese and Gozitan landscapes is a source of inspiration for many artists and Lawrence Pavia is no exception. The current exhibition at San Anton is his second solo exhibition, and marks a development and improvement of his first held almost exactly two years ago in a private gallery in Rabat.

Pavia’s beloved Binġemma landscape, the predominant theme of his 2009 solo exhibition does not fail to feature in this current exhibition, but in an entirely dissimilar way. The paintings are no longer composed of impressionistically applied brushstrokes laden with paint.

What we see instead are linear hard-edge landscapes. This is due to the fact that Pavia has never stopped sketching on site and intensely analysing the Maltese landscape and placing it under an analytical microscope.

He has in this way broadened his visual library to include even what most would consider eyesores, such as electricity poles and tower cranes, and the overcrowding of apartment blocks towering over Marsascala church.

In his own idiosyncratic way, he is recording life in Malta in 2011.

In addition to the Maltese landscape, the exhibition also includes a painting of the Romanesque Michaeliskirche in Hildesheim, Germany.

It is a controlled premeditated approach to painting that Pavia is presenting, but the creative process involved can be amply seen in the choice of colour scheme and the abstracted composition.

In the square acrylic on canvas paintings, fields, trees, buildings, roads and rubble walls are reduced to bare essentials outlined in black and highlighted by solid expanses of colour. Perspective may be faithfully interpreted on canvas or imaginatively portrayed, but always with one viewpoint per painting.

Following in the footsteps of other artists, both Maltese and internationally renowned, Pavia has obsessively studied the same landscape and interpreted it in different ways.

One such instance is Lunzjata Valley Gate, Gozo that is seen four times – in red, blue and yellow, each one being slightly different from the other.

Ramla l-Ħamra Bay, Gozo is on the other hand, interpreted twice. Another repeated theme is the Church of Santa Marija ta’ Bir Miftuħ, Gudja, which is seen from various different viewpoints and angles, and in diverse colour schemes.

It may also be the case that Pavia has found a genre more akin to his personality, and in which he feels more comfortable. One cannot help but wonder where his art will venture in the future. Will it change again or develop the hard-edge technique?

The linear, hard-edge style was in fact a natural progression or perhaps homecoming for Pavia, since he had already attempted the technique in the mid-1980s, and a decade later under the artistic tutelage of Malta’s hard-edge master, Harry Alden.

The palette is discerning and shows an aptitude for simplification revealing the geometric basics of a landscape’s anatomy.

Pavia’s hard-edge style is perhaps a process towards abstraction, but his love affair with the Maltese and Gozitan landscapes cannot be so short lived.

Whether depicting an idyllic landscape or one distorted by modern building blocks, a peaceful composition and bright palette shine through, reflecting his persona.

Pavia’s exhibition of recent paintings is open at San Anton Palace Farmhouse, Attard, till February 27.