Artist RICHARD SALIBA needs no introduction. He talks to Joseph Agius about his current exhibition The Language of Colour at Hotel Phoenicia.

JA: The title of the exhibition, The Language of Colour, suggests that colour is in some instances enough to communicate feelings. Has there been a change in your palette to express yourself more deeply?

RS: Colour is an important component of my work but not the only one. Structure, composition and harmony together with colour solidify and together bring out the artist’s own personality, values and spirit. Without these components, the work would be rendered superficial and commercial. The overall result in my work is meant to evoke the poetry that cannot be explained in words.

Għargħur

JA: These paintings focus on the beauty of nature, caressed by sunlight and unperturbed by the pestilence of progress. Are these paintings nostalgic revisitation of the past or are they representations of the small pockets of pristine Malta and Gozo?

RS: These paintings are evocative of a landscape that I have known and grown up in throughout my younger days and which brings me joy to behold and which we all ought to defend and protect.

Gozo (2)

JA: The Church is a presence that roots most of your compositions to a certain narrative. It adds spiritual peace to the painting. Does its distance and evanescence suggest that what had once dominated everyday life still persists as a presence in contemporary life, maybe at a subliminal level?

RS: The Church has been a symbolic feature not only in the Maltese context but also in European identity and culture. In our case, the dominant church domes almost invariably take precedence over other buildings even today when the Church’s influence has considerably diminished. Your observation is definitely true, that its evanescence suggests its past influence on the life and customs of the population.

Mtaħleb

JA: Hard edge used to be a style that used to define Richard Saliba in the past. The paintings of this exhibition flow with an expressionist yet restrained fervour. Does one mellow as one matures?

RS: I notice that your question seems to apply equally to politicians as well as artists. You correctly notice that my work has mellowed over the years from a hard-edge technique to one where lines have been blurred and this as a result of a greater understanding of the evolution of artistic trends and influences derived from contemporary artistic expression as well as from the impressionists.

Kalkara

JA: In the exhibition catalogue, curator Charlene Vella says that this exhibition comes 47 years after your first solo exhibition at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta. That venue as an exhibiting space is no more. What do you miss from those days when you were attempting your first steps in a long career which defines you as one of the foremost landscape artists in our country?

RS: My first exhibition held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta in 1975 was indeed an experience that I relish with satisfaction because it introduced my work to the artistic community but also because it gave me the opportunity to compare my work with that of other artists of my generation. 

The venue and the regular exhibitions held then were an opportunity where one could meet and socialise with artists on the island. As a young artist, I recall with nostalgia my first meetings and eventual friendship with artists who I looked up to in those days like Vincent Apap, Josef Kalleja, Antoine Camilleri, Frank Portelli, Emvin Cremona, Esprit Barthet, Gabriel Caruana and many others.

Spring in Mdina

JA: Veterans such as Pawl Carbonaro and yourself persisted in the genre even though in the past few years there was pressure for Maltese artists to be ‘sexier’ and contemporary. Yet, the landscape genre has seen a revaluation through the contemporary oeuvres of a number of Maltese and Gozitan contemporary landscape artists. Does tradition eventually trump artifice in art as in life? Is that why the almost formless church is indelible and persists in your compositions?

RS: Both Carbonaro and I have, as you rightly say, made use of the landscape as the primary medium of expression. Contemporary artists clearly are discovering and expressing themselves in new ways, not only in the techniques but also in the philosophy of art. I and other artists of my generation have grown up in a culture and in a world where painting and sculpture were the main medium of expression in the visual arts. This has nowadays evolved to incorporate other forms of expression such as installation and performance art, video and sound as well as many other forms of expression. Undoubtedly, this is more readily absorbed and accepted by young and emerging artists than those of the older generation.

Siġġiewi

View of Mgarr

Nevertheless, painting has, in the past 50 years, seen an emergence of figurative painters like Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Lucian Freud and so many others who are still attracting universal attention and acclaim.

The Language of Colour, curated by Charlene Vella, is open throughout the month of May at the Palm Court Lounge, The Phoenicia, Malta.

Richard Saliba. Photo: Frank Kirchner