Statement
John Martin Borg
exhibited his first works in 1979. Ever since he has presented a series of
personal shows. He also participated in a large number of collective
exhibitions. Locally his watercolours are found in a number of important places
including the Presidential Palace of San Anton, the Museum of Contemporary Arts,
The Maritime Museum, the Cathedral Museum in Mdina and the National Collection
of the Museum of Fine Arts. His works have also been exhibited abroad at the
Mall Gallery and the ‘Royal Water-colour Society’ open ex
hibition in London, at
the Unesco Head Quarters in Paris; also in Cologne, Munich, Heidelberg,
Stuttgart, Salzburg, Berlin, San Tropez, Paris, Dubai, Tunis and Florid (USA).
His paintings are also found in such prominent places as the ‘World Health
Organisation Centre’ in Geneva and the ‘Commonwealth Centre’ in London. One of
his paintings forms part of the Royal Collection in London, which was presented
by the President of Malta to the Royal Couple during their visit to Malta in May
1992.
Finding yourself on your own in the dim early hours of the morning, before the sun has made its first appearance, caressed by a gentle cool breeze and many a times accompanied by a mysterious mist that enshrouds both the landscape and yourself, creates such an emotional feeling that many time I found myself forced to paint. I always believed it was these magical moments that have been the real energy that has driven me to become the kind of artist that I am.
This
love to be out on location is not only related to my painting, it reaches deep
into my personality. As a child I grew up roaming in the open fields close to
home, where I amused myself running away into my dream world, away from the real
world to which I never seem to have adapted. Back At home I would spend hours
drawing, with my imagination running away into my fantasy world, the very place
I still find the need to escape to. Being out in the midst of nature away from
everybody gives me the chance both to retune my childhood days and unwind from
the strenuous reality. This is the reason why most of my land and seascapes are
devoid of people, for I prefer to go to secluded places where I can be all
alone, accompanied only by nature and my painting.
Once I find myself on location, I always
spend some time soaking in the mood that enshrouds me, wind, temperature,
humidity, cloud formation and more important the type of light are the effects I
will be scrutinizing. I spend some time studying the landscape or maritime coast
that surrounds me looking for the most interesting subject. After having decided
more or less the composition and what should be included into the picture, I
decide what type of paper I will be using to best depict the mood. It always
takes some effort to start laying down the preliminary pencil sketch. However
once I lay down the first washes on paper I am caught up in the magical world of
creation.
At this point I would like to make the following statement:
My personal experience with watercolour started out of necessity being the ideal
medium for outdoor painting; clean, quick in drying and light to carry about.
Given the fact that during the early days when I began exploring the
medium there was no one to teach it and hardly any books were available. I had
to struggle with great difficulty to learn how to handle such a demanding and
unforgiving medium. However the years of frustrations and hardship created in me
an “enormous respect for the medium”. Today I consider this “respect” as
my greatest asset as a watercolourist. This reverence for watercolour in turn
developed into a true love that grew deeper as I gained more experience and
confidence with the medium.
It was this passion for the medium that
created this drive in me to let the medium play a dominant role in my paintings,
many a times finding myself painting for the sole purpose of creating a
watercolour rather than a landscape. In the mid nineties the main subject of my
works became the medium itself. It was at this time that I use to define myself:
“as a watercolourist first than as a landscape or a maritime artist”.
The experience of working on location
for all these years forged in me an unusual sensitivity to the weather and
atmospheric mood, these became the hallmark of my work The spontaneous and
economical strokes combined with the fluid interpretation of the medium helped
to bring these moods to life in my water colours, many times allowing the
emotional expression to surpass the topography Most of These works eventually
became so ethereal that they took on a more poetic interpretation, partly
defining the landscape and partly expressing the emotional joy of a cherished
moment.
I believe that I will always have that
streak of romanticism welling up in my heart, however the search for a more
direct and aggressive approach has pushed me into mew pastures. Some of my
recent works are characterised by the dominance of passion and light, this is
evident in a collection of works painted in St. Julians bay under winter’s sun.
The desire to master new technique and the constant search for new subjects is
an ongoing process all artists have to undergo, and I will not escape this urge.
However the magic of the morning stillness enshrouded by its subtle light will
always lure me into creating those atmospheric works, which will always remain
my favourite.
I have always been a romantic! And like the
romantics of the ninetieth centauries I paint what my imagination prefers to see
rather then do a true topographical rendering. It is this form of escapism from
the arduous living that has engulfed us all, that fires the imagination of those
people, who on viewing my work, feel their emotions provoking some delightful
experience, store deep within their subconscious mind, that resonates with the
emotion generated by my work. This
is the kind of emotion (verging into the spiritual) that interests me. And it is
towards the peak of this emotion that I am aiming for, hoping I might be able to
mature it to its full expression.”
Top
I
always considered art as a form of expression. To me an artist is an individual
who has mature his sensibility towards life, nature and every thing that is
going to influence him emotionally and spiritually. Using this sensitivity the
artist in turn expresses himself through the creation of his work of art using
the fields or media he specialises in.
In turn his work attracts the attaint ion, and provokes the emotions of
his viewer.
It is this the emotional
aspect of the painting, which manifests itself in the passion or the sensitivity
of the art works, that has become the ultimate goal of my work. (This is mostly
felt in my abstract and religious works, where the inspiration for the works
normally originate from personal spiritual experiences rather then just a theme
or a commission of a religious subject)
Top
My Religious Work
John Martin Borg has established himself as a watercolour artist. He is mostly renowned for his maritime pictures and atmospheric landscapes. Working mostly on location his watercolours gradually developed into studies of moods and poetic expressions. However very few are aware of the love John Martin has for religious art.
This love has gradually grown with the artist, as his interest and
concern in the spiritual aspect of life became more and more important to him.
In the beginning it started showing up in his works with a few occasional
religious drawings but gradually developed into abstract interpretations of the
artist’s spiritual experiences. John Martin loves to pick upon a given a
spiritual theme, that somehow reflects an important aspect in his life, and
develop it through a serious of sketches. For these sketches he normally uses
pen and ink because it is a fast way of rendering his thoughts and ideas. He
dose one sketch after another in a rapid succession using tow or three different
coloured inks, this is a form of ‘thinking aloud’ in a visual sense. Once he
develops the idea he start to work on the available studies. These final
pictures are normally rendered in watercolours and gold. Through the influence
of iconography, gold features heavily in all John Martin’s religious works, as
it depicts the infinite nature of God. The end result might be a single finished
work or a serious of paintings with one given theme.
“I never can say that I have closed with a given topic when it comes to my religious art, I might return to it after many years and still feel as fresh with it as in the early days, when I was still working out the concept. The reason is that when one endeavours into his spiritual life and digs deep in his relationship with God, one enters into an unknown world that has no boundaries. The same with these religious themes one can never say he is done with any given subject.”
John
Martin exhibited his first religious work in his very first exhibition at the
Museum of Fine arts at Valletta, in 1979; this was a representation of a
crucifix. However it was in his twelfth
one-man shows, in March of
2000, that he dedicated a whole
exhibition for his Religious art. This was entitled:
‘Rendered in Red & Gold’
and was
held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta. In his last personal
exhibition, held at St. James Centre for Art, between October and November of
2003, he included his religious works together with his abstracts as an
intrinsic part of the
“Cross-Section” of his works of art.
For the period of Lent of 2004, John Martin Borg
presented a small collection of religious
works at the “V.G.B. Art Gallery” in Valletta. This exhibition included about
twenty-three studies and was entitled: “Meditative sketches”.
Top