“I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full; I have to surrender myself to what encircles me, I have to merge with my clouds and rocks in order to be what I am. Solitude is indispensable for my dialogue with nature” – Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)

Peter Seychell, born on June 20, 1967, is a qualified, non-pracitising draughtsman. At an early age, he started his own business and then afterwards went into the pharmaceutical sector, eventually taking over the management of the family-owned company.

As young boy, he was artistically inclined; however, for many years, he didn’t indulge this passion and subconsciously avoided galleries and exhibitions as they must have touched on a sore spot, that of having never seriously nurtured the passion to artistically create. This was addressed only about four years ago, when he could dedicate more time to his artistic abilities.

Although having shown his paintings at Gemelli Art Gallery together with artist Carmelo Bonello last December in an exhibition titled Nuances and participated in collectives, Baħħ is the first solo exhibition for Seychell.

Finding catharsis in faraway lands

The unperturbed and idyllic landscapes of Seychell evoke Friedrich’s above-mentioned words, the German artist who took Romanticism to absolute heights. The Maltese artist imbues a measure of this detachment from anthropocentric activities, ones that have overwhelmed us, especially in the last few years. He does this by stifling the chaos of all media, the toxicity of relationships, the numbing existentialism that conditions even the calmest among us, through a return to the roots, to the natural elements and atmospheric phenomena; an attempt to rebalance and recalibrate.

One encounters the stark stillness and the romantic purity of vast open spaces in Seychell’s sprawling landscapes, as one finds in Friedrich’s canvases.

A contemplative figure and churches, sometimes in ruins, feature in some of the German artist’s works, adding to the visual pathos, thereby rooting the narrative. For Friedrich, these landscapes were within walking distance; for Seychell, one needs to travel across sea and land to access this sacred solitude.

Eloquently titled Baħħ (void), the Maltese artist aches for finding one’s own soul in an exercise of regeneration away from whichever shores.

The snowy landscapes are woven with silence, with introspection; indeed, each of these works is a soulful incantation singing the praises of unspoiled barrenness, of utter preternatural peace. One thus becomes aware of the cardiac thud in the chest, the icy breeze serenading the ears and one’s breath turning to fog, creating variations to the theme. Being alone, without being lonely…

Seychell’s paintings murmur with suggestions, with indications of deliverance from today’s humdrum existence

Seychell’s art is about beating modern-day inadequacies, precipitated by a nine-to-five existence, by actually searching for the redemptory desolateness and seclusion of environments, both physical and metaphorical, an endeavour that makes it so far easier to inhale, exhale and exist.

Seychell’s abstraction of the genre points towards Anselm Kiefer and, especially, Gerhard Richter, who incidentally, like Friedrich, are both German artists whose roots owe somewhat to the German Romantic movement of another century to which their artistic ancestor belonged.

Seychell’s paintings murmur with suggestions, with indications of deliverance from today’s humdrum existence, a world away from the background noise of AI, construction, traffic jams, corruption, while embracing and acknowledging what really counts to reconnect.

The other side of Seychell

For Seychell, art has no rules, no style and certainly no limits. He finds the ink medium very alluring; he spends hours, if not days, creating fantastic scenarios that have a huge storytelling dimension, in which flora and fauna interact and merge to create new fables and myths.

This is reminiscent of celebrated illustrators such as Gustave Doré, Arthur Rackham and W. Heath Robinson. Whereas these three famous artists usually followed an established storyline within a body of established literature, Seychell’s approach is untethered and not inhibited by such limitations.

Rackham once said: “I love to create worlds and take people on journeys”, words that hold so very true for Seychell too. One looks at a Seychell painting rather like going on an adventure, exploring new scenarios as the tale unfolds slowly while the ‘morale’ of the story is rather undetermined.

One of these detailed works, large and sprawling and which must have taken the artist long hours to create, is being exhibited as well, thus introducing those who are new to Seychell’s work to his other side, the one that dwells on precision in execution, rather than spontaneity and improvisation.

Baħħ is an entreaty, a prayer, emanating from deep within the artist’s soul, to rediscover beauty, away from the ugliness and dissatisfaction of Maltese contemporary life. It is an invitation to adventure out of our imprisonment and find release, wherever one can find it.

Baħħ, curated by Mark Mallia and hosted by Gemelli Art Gallery, Ta’ Qali, is on until July 29. Consult the venue’s Facebook page for opening hours.  ECOVIS Malta is collaborating in this exhibition, whereby the artist and the institution commit to jointly donate 10 per cent of proceeds to be split between Malta Hospice Movement and Sigma Foundation, while the directors of Gemelli will be donating five per cent of the proceeds to the same entities.