Tonio Mallia’s new exhibition of oil paintings, entitled Early Light, represents something of a departure for the artist. While the theme of the landscape is certainly a recurring feature of Mallia’s oeuvre, the choice of oil paint as his primary medium might come as a surprise to those familiar with his expressive work in watercolours, as well as diluted acrylics and inks.

Mallia’s previous explorations of the topographical and atmospheric elements of the Maltese islands have been notable for their assured mastery of the fluid qualities of water-based media. He has harnessed this technique to, for example, evoke the harsh contrasts of light and shade under the local sun in dark ink against bare rice-paper or suggest the waning light of a summer dusk through ephemeral washes of thinned-out pigment.

Drydocks

Oil paint, on the other hand, is associated with a sort of bodily heaviness conjured by the material’s thick consistency and opaque quality. Unlike watercolour, oil paint requires a long drying time, a sturdy support that provides enough ‘grip’ to hold the paint and a whole plethora of equipment – thinners, solvents, heavy hog-hair brushes and so on. This makes it a most unsuitable medium for landscape painting en plein air – which is what the artist often practises.

An early riser, Mallia is apt to head out into the idyllic countryside that surrounds his home in rural Siġġiewi or further afield in Gozo, to catch the dawn’s early light. As the world around him is just beginning to awake, Mallia is already hard at work, having set up his equipment and made a number of preparatory sketches to make the most of this time. These sketches – which explore different colour combinations, textures and composition – would act as a guide to the final work itself.

Coastal Battery

He has, therefore, been obliged to adapt his approach when painting in oils to best suit his working methods and habits. While he had previously avoided the medium due to the irritating odours of solvents such as turpentine and white spirits, he subsequently discovered non-toxic alternative mediums that have been recently developed, allowing him to mitigate these issues.

One of the key factors involved in painting outdoors, and one which the artist himself sees as being advantageous to his creative approach, is the element of surprise brought about by the ever-changing conditions in nature. Skies turn, light shifts, rain pours, wind blows and, through it all, the artist struggles to pin down his fleeting vision for all posterity, a task (as those who have attempted such a feat would surely testify) that could seem, on a bad day, almost Sisyphean in magnitude.

The one thing that many casual art lovers might fail to consider when looking, wine glass in hand, at a dramatic rendition of a rugged coast, such as Coastal Battery, is the effort that has gone into its making – the wind whips your material around like a diabolical djinn, paint splatters and stains, your legs ache and you know that, at the end of it all, you still have to pack up all your equipment and lug it up a harsh, boulder-strewn hillside. Mallia certainly doesn’t make this process any easier for himself; there are few, if any, paintings of placid city squares to be found in his back catalogue. 

Fallen Rocks

Drydocks is something of an outlier in this regard, a rare urban scene for the artist, an acknowledgement of contemporary life – the interconnected, globalised world of trade and industry. Even so, the painting feels almost timeless, even elegiac As manual work becomes increasingly automated, even the impressive dry docks – once the source of much-wide eyed technological marvel in agricultural Malta – have come to feel almost quaint.

Likewise, Fishing Boats, a painting which presents very familiar form of iconography in the pictorial depiction of the Maltese environment, reflects the uncertainty of the local fishing industry, and a wider range of traditional forms of livelihood, in its fragmented composition and sober palette.

Wied Ħesri

Mallia has utilised oil paint in an unusual way, treating it in almost as free and decisive a manner as watercolour while still retaining its expressive qualities. A painting such as Fallen Rocks, for example, allows us to observe how Mallia has overlaid oil paint in both opaque and transparent layers, another recent innovation in the development of the medium that appealed to the artist.

At other times, the handling of the paint itself seems to reflect an emotional dichotomy, such as the contorted passage of heavily-applied darker pigments set against a more serene green wash in Wied Ħesri, reflecting that characteristic feature of the Maltese landscape in spring, when lush pockets of wildflowers emerge from the harsh features of a predominantly rocky island.

Lunzjata Valley

In Lunzjata Valley, on the other hand, the mood is dour – certainly a midwinter scene, drenched in rain. Touches of vivid greens and blues bring unexpected life to these deserted ruins but the painting remains pensive: the artist seems to be ruminating on a lost past attested to only by those abandoned buildings.

In a period of unprecedented environmental change and development, on both a local and global level, it seems pertinent to contemplate on what once was, to look ahead at what is to come.

The exhibition is on display at Gallery 23, in Idmejda Street, Balzan until Sunday, November 13. One may contact the gallery to book an appointment for a private viewing or otherwise visit the gallery on Sunday from 9am to 12.30pm. For more information, call on 9942 8272 or e-mail info@gallery23malta.com.