You never know when you are going to stumble upon good art. It happened to me recently when idle curiosity attracted me to an exhibition of crafts in Mellieħa.

Small though his paintings are, they are great in character

Among several stands by aspiring and, let me be honest, not very talented or promising artists, I came across a humble unattended stand full of tubes of oil paint, but more importantly, of beautiful little landscapes that were surely not by the hand of a dilettante.

It was a pleasant surprise, for I never expected such quality work at this kind of event.

Fronting the stand was a poster that informed me that the author of the paintings I liked so much hailed from the Comune di Cavriglia, a town in the Province of Arezzo, in the much-loved and absurdly beautiful region of Tuscany.

While I waited for the owner of the 10 or so landscapes before me to approach the stand, I had a good look at each of the paintings, liking one more than the next.

When he arrived, I saw before me a humble-looking man who introduced himself as Roberto Mini. I asked the price of a painting, and another surprise awaited me. He asked me to give him whatever I thought he deserved for the work. His real satisfaction, he told me, was to see my interest in his work.

Upon my insistence, he named a price, one that was far too meagre for the quality of work.

Small talk led to an in-depth discussion on art and about Mini being a pendolare, one who moves out from, and leaves behind him, his local environment on a regular basis to paint and collate new experiences.

This is how this pendolare found himself in Malta, exhibiting small, yet lyrically intense works. Deceptively simple as they may be, and traditional in the cases of some, there is more to Mini’s work than a simple pretty landscape, and the more abstract ones are all the more revealing.

His macchie on the small canvases or panels are applied with a dexterity that reveals sound artistic experience. And before I left, Mini assured me he has much more work back home, and larger paintings too.

It was indeed luck that led me to meet this gentle, talented septuagenarian. The few works that it was my good fortune to see revealed an unsung artist who deserves much better. Small though his paintings are, they are great in character.