Joseph Muscat

“I build collages using an industrial tar paper which I tear by hand and then glue, seal and paint in acrylic. These collage paintings, which I’ve been producing since 2002, evolved from my earlier canvas paintings. They are no longer confined to a specific, designated shape or space but grow in a fluid and sometimes open-ended assemblage. Although the material is non-archival it has an excellent record for longevity and preservation.

I arrived at this mode of mixed-media painting, partly by accident while rebuilding my studio after a terrible fire, and partly by design while reminiscing some childhood memories of my father. He was a restorer of broken sculptures, fine china vases and other objets d’art. I was inspired then, and became inspired once again, by my recollection of boxes filled with fragments of pottery or faience arriving at our house and leaving several weeks later completely reassembled and wholesome, with hardly an indication of their previous injured state.

Each collage grows and expands in an amorphous, spontaneous and often non-orderly way; sometimes it grows like a crystal, sometimes like an organism finding its way to a state of visual equilibrium. The subject matter and the title are synthetically evoked by the finished work. Each work is symbolically a metaphor for restoration, be it one’s life, a relationship or our stressed-out planet.”