[attach id=338038 size="medium"]Artist Leonard Portelli expresses himself through colour. Photos: Chris Sant Fourier[/attach]
Colours collide on the canvas as artist Leonard Portelli uses energetic brushstrokes, unleashing his current mood.
On the top right of the noisy painting a greyish smudge stands out – it looks like a mosquito.
“I think someone had come to pester me while I was painting it,” says Mr Portelli who creates his art from his studio at Mount Carmel Hospital where he lives.
The 58-year-old artist, who suffers from a mood disorder, is selling his paintings to raise funds for Lejn Xefaq Ġdid, a voluntary organisation that supports mental health patients after they leave the hospital.
Psychiatrist Joseph Vella Baldacchino, the president of the organisation, explains that the hospital provides everything, from free food and water to medication. But the minute patients step outside they have to face reality and the NGO helps them get started by helping them buy food or pay the initial rent, for example.
I paint mostly when I’m happy. There’s one colour I don’t like to use – black
Dr Vella Baldacchino adds that Mr Portelli’s works show what people with mental health problems are capable of achieving and that they can be creative.
And Mr Portelli is happy to spread this message. He started drawing and painting when he was a child and uses it as a way to express himself.
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“I express myself with colours… I paint mostly when I’m happy. There’s one colour I don’t like to use – black. It’s not me. My colours are bright and beautiful. I like to say that life is beautiful and I try to give that message,” he says with a broad, teeth-revealing smile.
He then mumbles something and his expression morphs as his eyebrows twitch into a frown. He says that people in the village where he lived did not always understand him and he was sometimes abused.
“Some people are nice but it’s hard to make friends… they ask for this and that and I give them. If I kept all the money that I gave I could have built 10 houses,” he says.
The “bizarre” way in which he dresses does not help, adds Dr Vella Baldacchino. This is a problem with many people at the hospital who live off second-hand, donated clothes that are often mismatched – adding to the stigma.
I like to say that life is beautiful and I try to give that message
Mr Portelli nods and the thought of eccentric outfits trigger a smile that gradually spreads cross his face.
Like his personality, his art is spontaneous and he rarely starts a painting knowing how it will turn out. But there is great thought behind his work and, just like the mosquito, there is a story behind each colourful brushstroke. A case in point is a painting depicting Our Lady holding baby Jesus. The bottom half of the painting is a solid block of black – the colour he loathes.
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“I painted it for my friend. He told me his mother had not called or visited him in years,” he says.
Mr Portelli’s works will be exhibited for sale at the lobby of Mater Dei Hospital until June 2. Lejn Xefaq Ġdid can be reached on 7939 4436 or lejnxefaqgdid@gmail.com.