Artist MARIA CASSAR is currently exhibiting a series of abstract paintings at Gozo’s art..e Gallery. She talks to Joseph Agius about her artistic voyage.
JA: The title of the exhibition UNBOUND suggests freedom from tethers and boundaries. Does it also mean being unbound from the figurative through abstraction?
MC: I chose the title UNBOUND because abstract art is the perfect medium with which I can express my inner feelings and ideas that cannot be expressed figuratively. When painting, I focus on the visual qualities of colour, form and texture.
I pass from one concept or idea to another while using my curiosity and imagination. At the same time, I provoke myself to experiment with finding different solutions. Simply expressed, my works are an emotional outpouring of my inner feelings and experiences.
JA: One of your former major themes dealt with the beach and children enjoying themselves, a thematic fingerprint of your previous work. Are you abandoning that theme in favour of these new languages? What triggered this change of heart towards abstraction?
MC: I still enjoy painting children, especially picturing them frolicking on the beach drenched with sunshine. Many times my models are my own five grandchildren. By means of my paintings, I try to immortalise their innocence and share their spontaneous fun. I cannot see myself abandoning this genre, but then I also enjoy ‘abandoning’ myself in abstract mental narrative.
JA: Your seashore-themed work used to remind me of Joaquín Sorolla in its freshness and ‘sunniness’. Which artists do you find inspiring as regards your new abstract work? Maybe the late Philip Chircop (locally), and the American abstractionists such as Helen Frankenthaler and Grace Hartigan?
MC: I am very much attracted to Sorolla’s beach scenes which keep inspiring me for their originality, his use of colour and brushwork. I like the way how Monet described him: the Master of Light. As regards my abstract work, I am attracted to the works of Franz Kline, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Kooning and Giuseppe Santomaso. As regards local painters, I study the works of the eminent Pawl Carbonaro.
I still enjoy painting children, especially picturing them frolicking on the beach drenched with sunshine- Maria Cassar
JA: In artist Arshile Gorky’s words: “Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite”. Do you feel that abstraction relates more to the soul?
MC: Abstract art is something beyond the real. The artist does not attempt to depict a visual depiction of reality. It relates to the artist’s inner feelings and his conceptual expression of ideas, and as you rightly said, abstraction relates more to the soul.
JA: There is a strong chromatic narrative in this collection of paintings. Has this liberty, of not being bound to figuration, altered your palette in some way?
MC: I should have said this at the beginning. I started experimenting with abstract art during the start of the COVID pandemic, when we were locked in our homes. At that time, I suffered an artist’s block. At first, I couldn’t bring myself to paint my figurative art as everything appeared bleak and tenebrious.
Slowly, I started to free myself and immerse myself by expressing my inner feelings using the power of colour, and its myriad hues and tones. I have not changed my palette, but on the contrary, it is my palette that has changed the way how I succeed to express myself.
UNBOUND, hosted by art.. e Gallery, of 1, Library Street, Victoria, Gozo, runs until April 29. Consult the event’s Facebook page for opening hours.
