HENRY FALZON is mostly renowned for his bravura in the pastel medium, where he excels in portraying rather unexpected landscapes and views. His ongoing exhibition at il-Kamra ta’ Fuq tells a different story, as he is now delving into uncharted territory for him, as he is exploring the human body using the oil medium. Curator Melanie Erixon interviews the artist.

ME: Why would a ‘landscape artist’ venture into figure painting?

HF: It is a simple question with a fairly complex answer. Firstly, the human body, if zoomed into enough, is ultimately a form of landscape. A microcosm of topology and features just as one finds with hills and valleys in the great outdoors.

Henry Falzon

But there are other important factors. I am an artist, rather than a ‘landscape artist’. Life is too short to stick to a singular track. I like to evolve, experiment and fine-tune my art adventure along the way. Sometimes I backtrack to check if things took an adverse turn, but overall, I feel that I have advanced quite a lot in my artistic journey and I feel I have many more ideas to express.

ME: Do you depict the idealised body?

HF: The idealised body lives in everybody’s mind, which reminds me of the saying “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. It is not a fixed absolute, but rather a collection of beliefs, often poisoned by mob rule of what constitutes the ‘ideal’. What I depict generally has a bias towards beauty and youth. However, it’s not always the case.

The New Mr Clean

This show features persons of different skin colour, ages and imperfections. The figures are treated as persons under my all-welcoming umbrella of humanity. It’s the viewers’ job to link the depicted figures to their experiences and build their very own narrative. I do not offer any explanations, so there is room for interpretation.

ME: Will we see more landscapes or is this a definitive switch?

HF: No, landscapes will definitely stay, and how! However, I aim to add more works to my oeuvre which are more of what I consider to be my Opus Magnum, both in their scale and in how I want to merge the figurative to the landscape. I want to create settings that elevate the viewer to a very different experience.

Creativity always finds a way and an artist’s muse can be found in anything and anywhere

This exhibition will hopefully be the opening salvo of a longer process of merger between figures and landscapes, or rather, the population of my otherwise barren landscapes. In the meantime, I’m tiptoeing, or perhaps wading, into the realm of figure-drawing.

Well-used Feet

ME: Why did you decide that now is the time to venture into figurative work?

HF: This past year was a tough one on a personal level and I spent considerable time visiting hospitals. I was not going out taking pictures of landscapes or flying my drone around the coastline. Suddenly, I had no more time to venture outdoors to sketch and feed my creativity. But instead, I spent most of my time confined inside hospital wards, surrounded by figures and bodies. But creativity always finds a way and an artist’s muse can be found in anything and anywhere, so here we are.

Put Your Feet Up

Unspoken Purple

Scar

ME: What projects are in the pipeline?

HF: I plan to make a small series of large canvases with figures. Figures set in landscapes with still-life elements (or props) that should send the viewer on a tangent. Apart from that, I will keep my established output of playful landscapes and small figure paintings. I also plan to work more on portraits.

To further my work, I also plan to do more photography and work closer with models to captivate compositions which will be used later on as reference material for my paintings.

Corpus et Partes, curated by Melanie Erixon for Art Sweven, and hosted at Il-Kamra ta’ Fuq, Mqabba, is open until January 3. The artist’s work can be accessed on henryfalzon.com.