Ochra et Nigreos Collection: Compositio III Drawing

This artwork makes part of a body of work produced during an artistic residency that took place at MUZA, the Malta National Community Museum in Valletta between the 23rd April 2021 and the 30th May 2021. This five week artist in residence programme celebrated the colours, timbres and hues that have resonated in my artistic practice for the past two years. Ochres and blacks are in fact the two starring elements that were overtly auditioned and thoughtfully selected to impart my visual narrative of line and form on an otherwise empty space. Nigreos appears in the first act with its bold velvety blacks that wander along the surface of the paper, setting a veil of darkness on the underlying white surface. And yet there are spaces that are forbidden to Nigreos; spaces that crave a warm golden light and the raw pigments of the earth, Ochra. This rather poetic verbal depiction of the impetus behind this artistic residency is grounded in a timeless fascination for the materials, media and techniques employed; a renewed artistic practice characterised by constant redirection and a visual language that values the creative process, regardless of pre-set concepts, ideologies and subject-matter. Drawing, printmaking and collage methods merged into a hybrid that embodies the process of research into a purely aesthetic experience that honours the relationship between idea and method.