Totally immersed in art

The works of French artist Laurent Muller, who has made Malta his home, are being displayed at the Wignacourt Museum, in Rabat, and another exhibition opens at the National Museum of Fine Arts, in Valletta, next Thursday.

Mr Muller is a full-time artist and encourages others to take on "the challenge and the risk" of focusing completely on their art. It may not be a luxury everyone can afford, but he feels "it has to be your only focus to do well".

In his three years in Malta, these are Mr Muller's second and third exhibitions.

Since he moved here, he decided to focus entirely on his art and now the concept of time has disappeared - no more weekends; no more structure.

"If you feel the need to paint at 4 a.m., you can. You have to immerse yourself into your universe, which although linked to your surroundings, your friends and those you love, is still solitary. To vanquish this loneliness, you have to create.

"That is what makes an artist - the fact that nothing else, other than art, can nurture you completely. Not even love is enough. Only your work can fulfil you."

It is possibly due to his full-time commitment and total dedication to his art that Mr Muller is having two exhibitions running simultaneously - they both close on October 29.

The Wignacourt Museum exhibition is a French initiative, organised in collaboration with a conference on freedom and slavery in the Mediterranean for a number of European professors.

The museum's "fantastic", classical hallway has provided the ideal backdrop for his acrylic paintings on glass - a contrasting series of abstract works and another in neo-baroque style. Inspired by St John's Co-Cathedral, the latter, Knighthood Memories, is a project he has been working on for 18 months.

The arches, the stone and the colour, he feels, complement the paintings on glass, both abstract and neo-baroque, which in themselves, create a good contrast and a balance in that the former can be hard to understand, while the latter are more figurative and "approachable".

Impressed by the beauty of the Wignacourt Museum, which he deems to be a "great exhibition space", Mr Muller intends to donate a percentage of his sales to its restoration.

The Fine Arts Museum, on the other hand, is exhibiting ink paintings, exuding a romantic feel and showing the versatility of the artist.

"I feel it is all going to fuse together and lead somewhere, and I look forward to it...," he says, aware of the need to "nurture" his research.

Mr Muller has dabbled in a variety of media, but his next step, he knows, would be linked more to architecture and be a move into the world of objects and interior design.

"We are living in a moment of fusion: interior design meets art meets architecture meets fashion," he says.

Mr Muller recommends to other artists to attend foreign art fairs. He himself visits Paris, but is only too happy to return to Malta, which he finds to be "safer, quieter, simpler, friendlier".

"Every time I leave and come back, I love it more".