NICOLE SCIBERRAS DEBONO is a young painter whose love of familiar and domestic narratives are at the core of what she paints. Ġorġ Mallia has a long look at works she is showing in a solo exhibition.

What fascinated me at first glance when seeing Nicole Sciberras Debono’s oil paintings was the rawness in them. Not the rough rawness that stems from a lack of expertise with her chosen medium, definitely not, but the rawness of the found object as depicting all that there is in its most essential qualities.

Hers are bright colours, in many cases primary ones, using a limited palette to make sure there is a painterliness in her art that cannot be mistaken. But, above all, it is the framing of her subjects that stands out. The solitary chair in the doorway, the girl with a torn plastic bag over her head. The selfie in the bathroom mirror.

Sciberras Debono’s first solo exhibition, Lost in the Ether, is being held at that most eclectic of all art spaces, and one which draws hundreds of art lovers to the small village of Mqabba, there to see the monthly exhibitions of some of the best contemporary artists on the island.

The exhibitions are curated by Melanie Erixon, of Art Sweven, and though there is no lack of vying for the coveted 12 exhibition slots per year by some excellent artists, Melanie leaves one slot for an up-and-coming artist... creating a springboard to success, if you like, while showcasing new art that few will have seen before.

I asked Melanie what drew her to Nicole’s work to begin with, leading to the setting up of this exhibition. She said she came across her work when curating a charity art auction and liked the work so much she was surprised she had never seen her work before.

“We accepted two of her works for the auction and they sold immediately. And I decided I wanted to be the first one to launch her solo before somebody else snatched her. I was immediately captured by her works.”

The works that captivated Erixon vary quite extensively in the breadth of their content. But what ties them together is their domestic setting.

This can be explained by the fact that the paintings were started during the partial lockdown instigated by the COVID-19 pandemic, so ‒ as was the case with many artists ‒ surroundings became the inspiration and eventual subject.

But Nicole continued to draw on her immediate surroundings also after the partial lockdown was over. That is, when she had every possibility of sourcing her subject matter from elsewhere, because this is what she wanted to depict.

She also draws inspiration from the domestic surroundings of a number of artist friends, part of an art working group she belongs to.

She confirmed this herself.

“I form part of an international community of artists and our inspiration was each other at that time. But I liked it and stuck with it,” she said.

So what the artist is doing is creating a visual diary of herself and her community. The poses are familiar to anybody who is into Instagram. I suppose Nicole does come from the Instagram generation, and the popular art form created by that social medium is quite distinguishable from other media to be found on the internet.

Instagram is quite “young”, and that youth is what underscores the paintings in this exhibition. It screams out at the viewer with the vivacity of the depiction. It calls attention to the captured moment, then to be shared with followers (if it were an Instagrammable photo). So a pair of feet next to a radiator, captured in non-toned blues and pinks are hers. So are a pair of hands just lying in her lap. A close-shot of a reality that is mundane, but frozen in time through the capture.

I want the painting to look like a painting. I want the medium to shine through

What is unique here is, of course, that the moment has been captured in paint. Roughly applied paint, purposely ‘unfinished’ in the sense that there is no photorealistic refinement to the art. But that was never the point.

“I want the painting to look like a painting. I want the medium to shine through. In fact, I don’t always varnish most of my paintings, because I don’t want an added layer to the paint itself. I want it to look the way I painted it. I’m inspired a lot by Lucian Freud and Ruprecht von Kaufmann.”

I do see why she should be. Take Freud, for example. There is the same type of positioning of the ‘sitters’ by that artist. The same ‘roughness’ of texture that is everywhere in Nicole’s paintings. That same arbitrary decision-making process as to when to stop painting.

I asked her about this, since there is an almost unfinished, but not to say incomplete, feel to some of her works. This actually adds a lot to the way she shows her reality through the filter of artistic rendition. She said she trusts the momentary intuition of the moment of painting... an immediate spontaneity that might not be the same from painting to painting.

Admittedly, my favourite works by her are the portraits. Some are “selfies” in the now time-honoured tradition of Instagram, towel wrapped round hair, iPhone top showing only the camera slot, the moment encapsulated in a mirror shot. She turns it into a work of art through the shocking pinks and oranges that form the half-bust shot and part of the background. The stark black eyes are focal points around which the rest of the painting gravitates. An almost shocking portrait of raw intensity.

A softer one is the half-profile, also in half bust, but this time predominantly in oranges and in yellows, though the pink also splashes on the shirt and in the hair-tie, while the sharpness of the thrown shadow creates room for sharp contrast, making the foreground figure pop.

The mirror is often there, sometimes distorting the image, as in the figure just out of the shower, the steamed-up mirror providing the inspiration for the almost impressionistic distortion.

And she plays around with perspective too, very much in the way that a phone camera does if focused on one part of the anatomy of the subject. So there is a weirdness in the posturing of a contortionist nude, leg crossing an arm with the hand up front and the rest of the body foreshortened. Yet another of the images that constantly remind me of Nicole’s generation.

She is actually being of her generation, and in so doing, inserting into the local art world a new dimension ... the Instagrammed and Instagrammable crowd that forms Gen Z. This is definitely one very important contribution of this exhibition.

But it’s not the only one. Nicole’s very individual use of oils is another, creating an aesthetic that is uniquely her own. The colour schemes tend to revolve around greens, blues, oranges and pinks, though she is not averse to splashing expanses of reds and yellows at times. There is a linear and angular feel in her artworks, through the use of sharp strokes, which is a direct result of her brushwork.

“In most of my work I use flat brushes, because I like that angular feel. Simple, but bold brush strokes creating shape and form.”

My work is usually instantaneous, in that I usually work on something that I would be fixated on at that very particular moment in time

This is particularly evident in my totally favourite piece in the show. Nicole told me that she is particularly inspired by people in their still and quiet moments. And this one shows that.

A woman in bed, arms akimbo over her sleeping head, but with light and shadows casting dancing, sharp shapes all over her. Even the sheet that covers her is a jumble of angular forms. For me, this painting encapsulates Nicole’s particular virtuosity. The lens transferred to paint, conveyed through flat brushes and oils, the project ending spontaneously by the artist when she wants to go on to the next thing. A wonderful exercise in the passionate portrayal of her young reality. The process itself as important as the art that results from it.

Nicole’s ethos is clear in her words. “As an artist, my work is usually instantaneous, in that I usually work on something that I would be fixated on at that very particular moment in time, involving a lot of immediate passion and spontaneity.”

And both the passion and the spontaneous nature of the works are very evident in this exhibition, that clearly shows that this is an artist to watch out for in future.

Lost in the Ether, curated by Melanie Erixon for Art Sweven and hosted by Mqabba’s Il-Kamra ta’ Fuq, is open until September 12. Consult the event’s Facebook page for more information.