Trevor Borg, who is currently holding an art exhibition, ‘Placeness’, at St James Cavalier, Valletta, will be the guest artist at the next meeting of the Art Discussion Group.

The artist will answer questions on style, vision, concept and technique. The meeting, which is open to the public, will be held at the Misco Training Centre at the Fino showroom in Notabile Road, Mrieħel, on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

The meeting will start with a Powerpoint presentation by art critic E.V. Borg on the artist’s works.

Borg, 34, has held five one-man exhibitions since 1999. His paintings emanate a sense of place, of timelessness (since time of day or season is not his concern), and an ‘open-endedness’, allowing the viewer to interpret and finish what the artist left incomplete.

This implies a certain false sense of spontaneity in a meticulous and well thought out application and meditated involvement.

Borg is primarily influenced by the British school, particularly the late sketches by Turner, Constable and Whistler, and therefore his works tend towards capturing the atmosphere and mood of place (nowhere in particular), except that of his mental vision: misty, wet and liquid.

He is also influenced by the surrealism of Max Ernst and the expressionism of Nolde, adopting the latter’s graffiti technique, grattage, frottage, dripping and dribbling of paint with an automatic gesture as practised by Pollock.

Though his favourite artists belong to northern Europe, Borg’s painterly technique is primarily Italian in flavour, with particular echoes of Oriental watercolour techniques of saturated paint with furry staining of wet on wet patches and dry graphic interventions.

Borg mixes acrylic, pencil, chalk, charcoal and watercolour techniques to satisfy his urge for an expressive language: subtle, soothing and therapeutic in a continuous narrative of possibilities on a theme – life’s journey in luxuriant vegetation.