Palazzo de Piro in Mdina is currently hosting an art exhibition by South African artist Philip Briel.

Briel was raised on a sugar farm in a remote area of Northern KwaZulu Natal and graduated in architecture from the University of Cape Town. He holds an M.Sc. in Sustainable Urban Development from the University of Oxford.

The artist’s abstract mixed media canvases are inspired by his love for environment, both natural and man-built and he enjoys the cross between the discipline of architectural design and the freedom of modern painting.

His abstract mixed media are inspired by his love for the environment

His works are full of intense shades, fractured or spilling light and charged textures. Artist Philip Briel sets out to capture the episodic and fragmentary, the subtler energies driving nature.

Briel’s abstract mixed media canvases are inspired by a fierce sense of place: “I’m not into iconic mentors. I started out in architecture, a disciplined and exacting profession in which you have to learn to visualise dimensions and do an enormous number of calculations.”

“Art opened me up to different possibilities. Now I look at planes and elevations as if they are the surface of a canvas, shifting and fluid, not fixed. My design work now is all aboutmobility and uncluttered spaces.”

The exhibition runs till May 31.