Colourful canvas of Maltese life

Brightly coloured watercolours of buildings, boats and street scenes, including the now obsolete orange buses, will feature in Peter Quinn’s sixth one-man exhibition in Malta.

Consisting of about 50 paintings, the exhibition opens at the Hilton on November 11 and runs until November 17.

Mr Quinn’s close connection with Malta began in 1979, when he met Josiette DeBono in Glasgow. She had started her medical degree in Malta but the course had been suspended because of the doctors’ strike. Thus, her parents decided that she should continue her medical studies in Scotland, where she graduated in 1984, when she also married Mr Quinn in Malta. It was in 1980 that he visited Malta for the first time, “very much as her new boyfriend!” Since then, there has been no turning back, with Mr Quinn making it a point to record his love for the island and capturing various aspects of Maltese life on his colourful canvases.

Born in Dumfries, Scotland in 1960, Mr Quinn left school in 1978 intending to be a lawyer. His mother died when he was doing his first year at the University. “This,” he recalls, “was unexpected and very shocking and caused me to do a lot of re-evaluation.” That led him to send a portfolio to an art school but still decided to finish the law degree. “So I have an LLB but no other professional legal qualification because I went to art school the next year. Initially, I was going to do a year and see how it turned out. It actually turned out rather well so I stayed on,” Mr Quinn says.