The etched, dark lines are descriptive and playful in equal measure; colours, fragile and transparent capture a lethargic mood, playing upon sun-bleached buildings and flagstones; shadows, sharply present, cast long distorted shapes; sea is never far away.

The ubiquitous, painted galleriji perched upon bulging corbels, with their seldomly opened purtelli, hint at lives happening behind the thick walls of the palatial buildings depicted – the private and the public just about meeting here. Clothes hang out across the narrow streets to dry. In this never-ending siesta, human presence is only hinted at rather than being tangibly present.

Antoine Paul Camilleri

In these 27 images made by Antoine Paul Camilleri and exhibited at the Valletta Postal Museum, Valletta, there are traces of Matisse and Derain working at the Cote d’Azur filtered, perhaps, through the jocular lines of cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé.

It is only that here, the elegance of the 19th-century villas and resorts dotting the French Riviera gets substituted with the fruitiness and pregnant sensuality of the southern Baroque.

In the only instance where big architecture is missing, the image is taken up by three female nudes whose shapes are ultimately not unlike the swollen forms conjured out of limestone by Maltese capomastri and scalpellini.

Valletta V

The Mediterranean mood, the incised, playful lines and thepurple-yellow complementary duality might, not surprisingly, suggest the picture-in-clay images of Antoine Camilleri. Antoine Paul is, after all, the son of Antoine Camilleri – one of Malta’s most interesting artists of the 20th century – and, as expected, any connection between the two is more than perfunctory.

Antoine Paul was raised in a creative household where every member of his numerous family was expected to indulge and to participate actively in the artistic endeavours of the senior Antoine.

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It is here that Antoine Paul learned the basics of his craft, to draw and to apply colour theory, to conceptualise his thoughts, to give tangible form to the germ of an idea, and to experiment with the materials available. Antoine Paul would, for several years, consolidate this leaning at the Malta School of Art, where he studied with Esprit Barthet.

Another formative experience on the young Antoine Paul was his father’s friendship with Gabriel Caruana. The two artists fostered a deep artistic bond between them and in subtle ways they did influence each other’s work. Father and son were completely taken in by Gabriel’s use of clay and the fascinating process which goes with the production of glazed ceramics. This is an interest that endures and, in his studio at Pembroke, Antoine Paul continues to experiment creatively with the medium.

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Possibly it was this friendship with Gabriel Caruana that made Antoine senior think about the many artistic possibilities inherent in clay as an artistic medium.

In the process Antoine devised a technique that beautifully combined his drawing and painting skills with the materiality of clay, namely, its earthiness, its transformative powers; its reaction to atmospheric conditions; its fragility and strength; its manner with which it concurrently stops time as much as it succumbs both to its healing and aging effects.

Pyrography is a technique that is akin to the etching process; a printing technique in which Antoine Paul is equally proficient

Antoine Paul’s present series of images somehow evokes the memory of his father’s pictures in clay. The materials employed are intrinsically different and yet the use of the incised line as a means of discovery is present in the work of both father and son.

If in the case of Antoine senior, it was his stylus gliding into the freshly rolled-out clay, in the case of the younger Antoine it is the use of controlled fire on a beechwood surface.

For Antoine Paul is here using the technique of pyrography, or drawing with fire, a means by which lines are indelibly marked with the use of a heated tool, underlining the fact that the very act of creation is intrinsically also one of destruction.

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The marks Antoine Paul makes on the wooden panel might have a playful feel about them, but they are meticulously controlled. Pyrography is a technique that is akin to the etching process; a printing technique in which Antoine Paul is equally proficient.

In both instances, the material is eaten away by an agent, fire in the former, acid in the latter, but these agents of destruction are in both instances employed as allies rather than enemies of the creative process.

The sun is more than hinted at in Antoine Paul’s images. At the same time life giver and destructive, the merciless Mediterranean sun is evocative of the dual role of the fire which both burns and creates and thus, in a way, these are works wherein form and meaning beautifully complement each other.

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In another link with his father’s pictures in clay, Antoine Paul adds colour to his images. He uses varnishes to obtain a degree of light and shade and then, with acrylic pigments, he adds coloured glazes. The glazes’ transparency all the while respecting the natural vein of the wood. The addition of colour is quite untypical of the pyrography technique.

Pyrography, which before the 19th century was known as pokerwork, is often relegated to the condition of a craft or folk art. With his use of the medium, however, Antoine Paul rises well above that very restrictive, derogatory definition.

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The lines he burns into the wood are exploratory and poetic. They stir up reminiscences of Valletta and Lija, areas to which Antoine Paul is sentimentally attached. Above everything else, while etching the lines, and intoxicated by the resulting smell of burning wood and blinding smoke, it is the memory of his own family that Antoine Paul discovers.

Christian Attard lectures in Visual Culture with the Department of Art and Art History, University of Malta.  Drawing with Fire, hosted by the Malta Postal Museum, runs until April 29. Consult the venue’s Facebook page for more information and opening hours.