A gunsmith, a mechanic, a draftsman and a technical designer. Raymond Agius’s career path is definitely not highly typical of his peers. But becoming an artist, he tells Veronica Stivala, is not something one suddenly takes a decision about.

One does not suddenly take a decision to become an artist, says Raymond Agius, “but almost unconsciously drifts into art, pulled by the poignancies in life”.

The artist remembers sitting on a bus watching a girl going through a series of silent emotions. He watched her fighting them with tears beading in her eyes. She struggled to suppress emotions that were trying to overcome her. It was a beautifully sad experience that prompted him to paint every detail of her angst onto multiple canvasses. That may have been his first recognition that there was something in him that also needed expressing.

Agius, who has been both an engineer and a car designer, is currently displaying his latest collection of paintings in an exhibition entitled Behold the People.

Before we discuss this particular exhibition, I’m curious to know how an engineer came to be an artist. Agius draws a comparison between the two disciplines, pointing out how engineering is a profession that has a lot to do with observation, a skill an artist cannot do without.

“Over the years I discovered my aptitude for engineering. One plans and communicates with sketches and drawings. I found I had a natural ability and over time I moved into experimenting with other mediums via art courses and sharing studio space with now well-known artists,” he explains.

His extensive travel led him to seek out the world’s great museums to further his education and increase his understanding of and appreciation for exceptional art produced by the Old Masters.

“By closely deciphering the brush-strokes, techniques and composition in paintings hanging in museums across the world, I came away with a wealth of knowledge.”

Among his influences, Agius lists artists like the Viennese Egon Schiele, the Spanish Diego Velasquez, the American Edward Hopper and the Valencian Joaquin Sorolla.

One almost unconsciously drifts into art, pulled by the poignancies in life

He elaborates: “Lucky as I am to have time to travel, I have the opportunity to sit before these important works and meditate and sketch and observe for hours, understanding brush-strokes and imagining what it might have been like for each individual artist at his easel.”

This artist’s latest exhibition features portraits of well-known figures in the local scene – with a particular emphasis on the arts world.

Agius reveals that during the 35 years he lived away from Malta, he dreamt of the time he could return and give something back. His friend Ġużi Gatt, a well-known researcher of all things Maltese, suggested a portrait exhibition, offering hundreds of names of people who contributed to the country’s development.

Together they worked on those people, a process which took two years. First, Agius researched the subjects then sketched them, requesting their permission to portray them, of course. Once permission was granted, research continued and photographs were acquired. Finally, the manifestation in paint or ink began in earnest.

What is interesting about a visual, Agius agrees, is the story behind it. What’s the story behind some of these portraits?

“Each portrait has a hidden story,” he comments. “It is hidden behind a veil we learn to pull over ourselves. Life, family and job cannot but affect us and show up on our visage. It is the person’s attitude toward life I try to capture and that attitude affects the choice of pose and helps me create the character and drama surrounding eachportrait.”

Agius’s favourite subject is the female mind and form. “Combining portraiture and figurative work, my models are chosen for their expressive faces. Emotions and thoughts are visibly betrayed by their eyes and mouths, the shape and stance of their body, whether resting, arranging their hair or putting on a necklace. Ordinary life is, to me, even more exciting than historic scenes of pillage and carnage depicted by the renaissance masters.”

To Agius, the individual is everything. He muses: “To capture that moment when your partner’s eyes light on being given a rose, the way she looks away blushing at an unexpected compliment – that is what I profess to recreate.”

On the rare occasions when Agius is not painting, he might be found walking the nature reserve alongside his Williamstown Studio in Australia, hiking and observing deer around Hidden Valley in the mountains outside Pittsburgh, where he has his American Studio. Or even walking the remote country lanes in the south of Malta in the mid-morning heat.

In between, he travels with his partner Cristina who sits with him, as he studies a painting for hours, be it in a small museum in a remote part of the US or a grand one in a stately capital in Europe.

What’s next in the pipeline? After a short holiday in Venice, Agius will spend seven months in his Australian studio creating his second exhibition in Malta for the Malta Maritime Museum.

Because of his work as an engineer, Agius is “intimately acquainted” with machines. He “loves them as much for their powerful (and even destructive) nature as (he does) for their purposeful aesthetics”.

For this exhibition, he is working on a series of paintings of the Santa Maria Convoy of WWII. “One needs to be accurate in depicting in detail every ship and every aircraft,” he points out. The research is intense and before the drama is added with shots of bomb-bursting colour, a technically perfect sketch capturing that moment in time is absolutely imperative.

Behold the People runs at the Casino Maltese, Valletta, until next Sunday. The exhibition was set up under the artistic direction of Susan Waitt.

http://ray-agius.artistwebsites.com