As local artist Patrick Galea’s solo exhibition at Tigné Point’s Centre Gallery ends this week, Joseph Agius gives us a glimpse into the man and his work, while there’s still time for us to visit the show
Landscapes, Patrick Galea’s fifth solo exhibition, demonstrates the artist’s predilection for the landscape genre. The vibrancy of his palette, predominantly primary in colour, as well as the minimalisation of elements through reduction define the signature style of the artist. This is complemented further by his use of colour and light which is Galea’s trademark.
His days as a 1970s student of architecture and design at the Jacob Kramer College in Leeds exposed him to different perspectives. The tutorship of British artist and educator Frank Lisle markedly contributed to the young Galea’s perception of form, volume, light and colour. David Hockney was a former student of Lisle when the latter was the head of the art department at the Bradford College of Art. One can safely surmise that having Lisle as a common denominator explains the Maltese artist’s admiration for Hockney’s work and his development as a landscape artist.
Galea considers himself to be an educator by occupation and a designer by profession and, very modestly, lesser of an artist. Initially, his medium of choice was the watercolour one and his first two solo exhibitions back in the 1970s showed his burgeoning mastery of this transient but unforgiving medium. He experimented with watercolour and perfected his technique until he felt that he had exploited most of its possibilities. His 2008 shift to acrylic as the preferred medium of choice increased his painterly options as, consequently, he was able to accordingly alter his palette to a more brilliant and luminous one and tackle the landscape genre without the restrictions of watercolour. His architectural renderings, both as a student and as a designer, necessitated the characteristics of a water-based medium. However, through acrylic, he didn’t summarily reject the benefits of a technique that had accompanied and served him through all those years.
There is an innate search for architectural elements even in a landscape in which human intervention is slight. Galea’s landscapes are an escape from the clutches of contemporary Maltese reality and the incipient ugliness that is the result of the systematic and uncontrolled destruction of Malta’s urban fabric. Gozo’s pristine beauty shines in How Green is my Valley, the possessive adjective eloquently attributes patriotic pride to an undisturbed corner of our sister island’s geography.
How green is my Valley GozoA man of a sunny disposition who wouldn’t be able to live without colour
Galea’s landscapes exude an endemic and radiating warmth that seems to emanate from deep within the geology and topography of our islands. The lack of actual human presence accentuates the purity of the Gozitan landscape which is complemented by the untainted celestial blue of the cloudless Mediterranean sky. The salt pans in the paintings with the self-descriptive titles of Saltpans One and Saltpans Two, as well as the terraced fields, are the spoils of past human endeavour. They speak of a time long gone when Man lived in symbiosis with nature. Man tilled the land which seasonably fed him with its yield while seawater in the limestone pans slowly evaporated and left the residue of salt necessary to cure and season meat and other produce. Progress has not, as yet, reared its ugly pestilent head to rape and devour this part of Calypso’s island. Such a pantheistic overview, in which all of nature is divine, does away with the depiction of an overpowering sun as a life-giving source of light and life. All of nature participates in a self-perpetuating miracle. Galea eliminates all actual human presence from his landscapes although at times he portrays the necessary evil of human endeavour.
Qarraba 360Galea’s formal training in architecture and design and his perception of beauty in man’s industry inspires him to find beauty in the gothic distant silhouette of an enterprise that is a mainstay of our archipelago’s economy. American Precisionist Charles Sheeler’s words were ominously prophetic: “In a period such as ours when only a comparatively few individuals seem to be given to religion, some form other than the Gothic Cathedral must be found. Industry concerns the greatest numbers. It may be true that our factories are our substitute for religious expression”.
The cynical perspective that human presence is a contaminant is given relevance in Gozo Channel. In a style reminiscent of the work of Sheeler and his fellow American Precisionist Charles Demuth, Galea finds beauty in the lack of human activity within the empirical geometry of the boat deck’s architectural elements. This is another example of Galea’s affinity with design. There is reverence to the mathematical proportions that govern the structure and provide stability to a boat that relentlessly crosses the width of the channel separating Malta from its sister island.
Hockney, an artist who influenced Galea’s view towards landscape art, remarked that “the arrival of spring can’t be done in one picture”. The Maltese artist occasionally interprets this statement quite literally when he brings together paintings which work independently of each other to get at a bigger picture. This disconcerting fish-eye view of the whole landscape is demonstrated in paintings like Qarraba 360; a polyptych that takes the British artist to task and delivers a fish-eye view of a familiar Maltese landscape. The four different segments can be pulled apart to offer four independent landscapes whose geographical location might prove tricky to determine. By bringing them together, the whole becomes cohesive and the ‘bigger picture’ of Qarraba is revealed.
This playfulness, just as much as the vibrancy of the colours of his paintings, defines Galea and his attitude to life as a man as well as an artist. He is a man of sunny disposition who wouldn’t be able to live without colour. This collection of paintings demonstrates this in no uncertain way.
Landscapes is hosted by the Centre Gallery of Tigné Point, Sliema and is open from Monday to Saturday until Wednesday from 10am to 4pm.