ART | Paintings | Natura Morta

"These paintings are not landscapes in the traditional sense of the word, but they speak eloquently of the island of Malta and the elements of its material fabric of weathered stone of playful light and dancing water and the mysterious hidden forces of nature and the cosmos perceived through the filter of human thought and feeling. Like ancient stones telling their story without words in a language that is both completely human and understandable secret and obscure. At the centre of these paintings is a stillness at one with the ebb and flow of the elements that they describe, that stems from a contemplation of the pulse of nature and its interaction with man in a timeless symbiosis."
– Alan Mitchell, Artist

Landscape I

Natura Morta–Natura Viva (i)

Oil, prickly pear cactus & white cement on canvas
27 x 43 cm
Signed, 1985

“This early series of paintings mark a new beginning in my work. They are inspired from the Maltese environment where I used to go for long walks in the countryside around Xemxija and Mizieb. There I used to study and sketch the rubble walls, the wild flowers, paint the farmers at work and their farmhouses. I used to pick twigs and small fallen branches from the trees and I started to incorporate them in my paintings. I was particularly struck by the prickly pear palms which dry in the summer heat and they reveal a web of fibres, textures and tissues. I started to incorporate them in my paintings, fix them on a bed of white cement, and seal them under layers of fibre-glass. Then I painted complementary textures on canvas to go with them.  I thought at first that these were a new form of still-life painting. I called them Natura Morta–Natura Viva. Today, I look back at them and see them anything between still-life and landscape painting.  They are truly about my response to the environment where I lived.”