When colours express feelings

Artist-philosopher Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci is exhibiting 27 works of art at the Maltese Embassy in Paris, courtesy of the Maltese Ambassador to France, Mark Miggiani.

The display represents works done over the last three years showing a visual memory of feeling. The essence is trying to remember places and moments through colour. The intimacy of particular places in Malta is being recalled through colour.

The works depict the memory of a feeling. There are several places the artist considers as harbouring a ritualistic nature.

In Emergence Of Solitude, the artist was inspired by the sea but it is not the sea that is being shown but a colour that Dr Schembri Bonaci felt he could empathise with.

Another work is called The Impossibility Of Presence, in which white predominates. This work seems to indicate the artist's feeling towards something that was elusive to him. In fact, he seems to harbour a love for elusiveness. At the same time, he appears to be attempting an escape from time.

A set of paintings is called Mellieħa Towers In Blue, Mellieħa Towers In Yellow and Mellieħa Towers In Red. In exploiting the form of the red tower in Mellieħa and that of the watch tower at Ta' Ciantar, the artist tried to depict the spiritual link between the two sentinels. In truth, what is being painted is the memory of those two sites.

In opening the exhibition, which runs until March 8, Marjorie Trusted, senior curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and who curated the exhibition, referred to French artist Nicolas Poussin, a celebrated painter-philosopher.

"This title of painter-philosopher can be applied to other artists and I'm absolutely sure that Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci, is similarly an artist who has on occasion worked far from his native country, is equally a painter-philosopher, an artist who thinks and who cannot paint without thinking.

"What we see here, if we try to understand these works, is an attempt to communicate these thoughts. But such ruminations and meditations can only be communicated through the paintings," Dr Trusted said.