For artist Ġanni Pace, seagulls used to be a welcome source of distraction as a schoolboy in Pietà.

"Seeing them suspended over the rough sea and the tousled treetops like white ghosts was always inspiring for me," the sculptor says.

The seagulls still crop up now and then among the 82 sculptures forming part of Mr Pace's ninth solo exhibition, Romantic Fantasy, at Auberge D'Italie in Valletta.

The pieces reveal the character and the passions of the artist.

Another recurrent theme in his work is motherhood, with pregnant women appearing throughout the exhibition.

"The first work I sold was that of a pregnant woman," Mr Pace recounts.

"Motherhood for me is an impressive thing. A mother always seems to give much more than she gets. Mothers are the most precious thing around.

"Even when a man finds a woman to love and who loves him, she becomes a sort of a second mother to him," he adds.

Christ, the main sculpture of the exhibition, was made at a time when Mr Pace's wife was going through a time of intense suffering: "I started work on that in between visits to my wife as she was struggling for her life in intensive care.

"I was crying and chiselling away; all that suffering brought me to do this piece," said the artist, a man of faith.

While that period is thankfully over, his wife safely back home, the sculpture still stands as a reminder of suffering with one's beloved.

Faces too figure prominently in his work, with sculptures having several faces in the same space. "Man is a walking theatre: laughing, crying, at times being insincere, at others cruel hearted," Mr Pace observes.

The exhibition, in clay, wood and stone, ranges from the spiritual to the pagan to the philosophical, all the product of the same pair of hands.

Romantic Fantasy, which was inaugurated by President Emeritus Guido de Marco, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, 9 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. on Saturdays and 9 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. on Sundays, running untill May 30.