Art is a discipline that demands study, dedication and practice. Exciting artwork requires knowledge, an inner vision and originality to make it distinct.

Anna Galea has successfully amassed a wealth of experience throughout her artistic endeavours, exhibiting large-scale representational art and abstracts in her favourite medium of watercolour, both locally and beyond.

In her Hello Summer exhibition, she surprises us with her new directions of spontaneity and inventiveness through a host of aesthetic experiences that welcome any interpretation by the onlooker. The medium of watercolour is rich in opportunity and, while Galea aptly uses it for exactness in her representational artwork, she equally employs it in her abstractions to convey mystery.

While chatting with Galea, she expressed how intrigued she was with the various imaginations communicated by the guests who visited her ongoing exhibition.

Her experience in exploring the medium with boldness is reflected in her collection. She has assembled all the formal qualities of composition, texture, brushwork, proportion, values, line and rhythm and, together with her emotional aptitude, she creates a sense of unity and balance without compromising on the luminosity and fluidity of her medium.

Red Sun

Over the years, Galea has proved to be a virtuoso of texture. In Just Reflecting, she performs visual and tactile sensitivity in the reflection of water. In paintings like Breathe in… Breathe Out… and Hello Summer, she paints with absolute fidelity to detail while, in Summer Mountain and Red Sun, she aims at pure abstraction.

Adhering to compositional balance, she paints loosely. In so doing, she creates gradations of colour value while juxtaposing different hues to convey a sunny feeling. The subject becomes truly her own and her skill at representing it becomes a prized asset.

Abstraction thus encompasses a maximum of artistic efforts. The artist gives careful thought as she conveys her emotions in quick, decisive brushstrokes, generating a fiery energy across the picture plane.

The artist gives careful thought as she conveys her emotions in quick, decisive brushstrokes, generating a fiery energy across the picture plane

The yellow and blue hues are forever present in several of her paintings. With abrupt, agitated strokes, she creates a state of excitement, while her linear, horizontal soft warm and cool hues offer tranquillity. At times, she combines the two moods, yet still resulting in a successful compositional movement. Adopting such light and dark colour value helps the viewer to take in the metaphorical summer skies kissed by the warm sun.

Through her skilful competence, she tilts the paper to create intrusion and control of colours to produce distinct boundaries, as seen in Sand Dune on the Beach. Just as the impressionists would accentuate their paintings, leaving bits of their white paper uncoloured, Galea’s paintings are equally captivating, creating a horizon that is presented by a white strip across the picture plane.

In Breaking Sun, the artist produces a sharp, ragged white shape, giving the impression of a bright heavenly light that is breaking through a psychedelic sky, covered in a deluge of whimsical colours. It reminds me both of Giovanni Battista Gaulli’s ceiling at Il Gesù in Rome and Georgia O’Keeffe’s abstract gestural paintings.

Gold Vine

Her collection includes also stand-alone compositions. A single leaf or flower dominates against a blank background, giving prominence to the composition of the subject matter. Her Lily and Gold Vine paintings exhibit textural qualities, suggesting tactile sensitivity. In the latter, she uses mixed media, including gold, without compromising the medium’s luminosity and fluidity. The colours used seem to denote a crumbly texture, frail to the touch from the scorching sun. Adopting a limited yet harmonious value range, the compositions all promote a summery feel through a spectrum of seemingly sun-kissed yellows, orange and brown hues.

Galea’s style at this 2022 exhibition is varied. In just two of her paintings, Carob Leaves and Żnuber, she takes us back to her realist floral paintings so synonymous with her style.

In Galea’s paintings, there is an array of movements that suggests brightness, joy and a zest for life. The cheerful warm hues and refreshing cool blues have all been successfully mustered to suggest the sunshine and warmth, as the embodiment of summer.

Hello Summer, curated by Charlene Vella, is open until the end of the month at the Palm Court Lounge, The Phoenicia, Floriana.