Last month, an art exhibition by three artists was held at Selmun Palace. One of the artists was Sylvie Buret, a painter who lives in Malta.

This French artist has had a very unusual career. Born in France in 1962, she qualified as a ship’s master and sailed for 15 years up and down the African coast. After working as assistant captain of St Malo’s harbour, she came to Malta as a European Union maritime expert in April 2003.

She fell in love with the island and decided to settle here and make a living by selling her paintings. She always had a particular interest in art and made good use of her talent while she was at sea. “There are not many distractions on a ship when you are sailing for many weeks. You have time to think about the things you have seen and to develop what was at the beginning only a hobby,” she says.

Using painting mediums such as pastels and watercolours, this self-taught painter likes to put as much colour in her paintings as there is in her life. Her source of inspiration is West Africa – its warm colours, zebras and Masai warriors are recurrent in her paintings. The Maltese Islands have been another source of inspiration similar to that of West Africa. There is the same dry landscape and some aspects of the way of life, like for example close family ties.

Sylvie Buret defines her work as figurative and a bit surrealistic. When she starts work on a painting, she first takes pictures of the subject and then works on it by changing position and colour of the subject. As she says, “People wouldn’t recognise the sea or the traditional Maltese houses; I like to change everything. I can transform a field by painting in zebras.” She likes to take part in workshops because in this way she can meet other artists and learn techniques that exercise her imagination and improve her skills.

Besides painting landscapes, women and so on, she also paints for children, with naïve figures, funny animals, and of course lots of different colours. She has two children and has already introduced them to art by taking them to workshops, as she thinks it is important that children should be exposed to it from a very young age.

Sylvie has exhibited in France and in Malta: twice at the Grotto Tavern in Rabat, at Selmun Palace and last summer at Cleland and Souchet. Her paintings are also displayed at the Manoel theatre shop. Living in Malta allows her to do more exhibitions than if she had stayed in France and, as she got married in 2004, she prefers living here and has no intention of returning to France. She has sold many of her paintings during her exhibitions and also through her website.

She thinks the Maltese are quite interested in her work and in art in general. However, there do not seem to be any funds available to help budding artists get started.

The other artists who exhibited their work at Selmun Palace were Kevin Attard who does silver filigree and Talia Maggi, who does ceramic. It is one of Sylvie Buret’s projects to develop similar cooperation among artists.

Kevin Attard is self-taught and derives his inspiration from films and theatre. Talia Maggi attended courses in ceramic and various workshops, her inspiration comes mainly from the sea and the environment. She expresses herself through her art. She likes to know how people interpret her work as it is quite abstract.

Kevin Attard’s filigree work is much more classical and, even though the abstract is pretty new for him, he is trying to create contemporary filigree by mixing it with porcelain and glass. They are encouraged by the fact that over the past 10 years, interest in the arts has increased and developed.

This first collaboration gave these artists the opportunity to share ideas and to create new concepts;

they want to combine their arts. Kevin found this

first experience very rewarding as now he can experiment by incorporating Sylvie’s colourful pieces and Talia’s clay into his filigree work.

This cooperation clearly demonstrates that people from different cultures, and various backgrounds can mix and emphasises the fact that art has no barriera.