“Beauty is a reaction, not an opinion,” says Emma Mattei, a friend of American artist H. Craig Hanna, who is holding his first landscape exhibition in Malta entitled “Right Outside my Window. In fact, his paintings illustrate his reaction to the environment he finds himself in.

Hanna, who graduated Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Figurative Arts in New York, usually paints stylised works with a strong cosmopolitan feel. His influences are various; from Velázquez to contemporary expressionistic painters George Baslitz, Egon Schiele and Austrian expressionist artist Lucian Freud,

He has lived in New York City and London for the past 15 years and has won international recognition. He has exhibited in many galleries in New York, London, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Milan. His work received an award from the National Portrait gallery in London and his works hang in private collections of international figures such as fashion designer Marc Jacobs and actress Drew Barrymore.

He came to Malta in 2002 with his girlfriend and for the next three years travelled between London and Valletta, painting in both cities. The museum director invited him then to come back for his first national exhibition in his career

He painted modern cosmopolitan pictures but has now experienced what he calls a kind of “visual therapy” and his stay in Malta has definitely changed his style.

“There is a lot of beauty here; I couldn’t help but notice that it was right outside my window! I started to see colour and composition in a new way; the view across the harbour at twilight, perfectly still, became a graphic Chinese silk screen and I would rush for my paintbrush.”

He believes that his work in Malta is more real, authentic than in London. “Maybe in London we want to be the more original and we think too much about trying to make it unique. Malta is much quieter than London, not so busy. I think I did my best work ever here. It is truer, not contrived, honest. Living here has changed me, I never thought I would paint landscapes until I came to live in Malta.”

He feels that his work here is much more a study or an experimentation. He is still painting figurative works but is more interested in painting landscapes now. He taught himself this technique because he is convinced that “by doing it, you learn it”.

From his paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, one can see that Grand Harbour was a source of inspiration and how several landscape works of London show that after his return to that city, he looked at it in a different light.

The big portrait of Gerald de Trafford KM in the exhibition room was a gift to the family to thank them for allowing him to paint from the terrace of their house. But it was also a kind of challenge for the artist. When one first sees the portrait one might think that it is an 18th century painting. He wanted to prove to himself that he could paint in the traditional way as he is convinced that one can’t be a modern painter without having knowledge of traditional, classical paintings.

H. Craig Hanna likes painting in the evening or at night when Valletta is quiet and he can concentrate on his work. His paintings of the city are quite dark, which contrast with the colourful watercolours of the Maltese countryside and the cliffs.

H. Craig Hanna finds that there were amazing Maltese painters at the turn of the previous century and he particularly likes Edward Caruana Dingli. But he thinks there is a huge crisis in Malta as regards the visual arts, like everywhere in Europe. “People have to raise the standards in arts! The curator of the Museum of Fine Arts, Dennis Vella, has a very good eye; unfortunately, there are less and less people with good taste. Nowadays, public money is wasted on bad works of art when they are put in collections.”

For him, the visual arts have to be intelligible. “You don’t have to read the little note to understand a painting. Visual arts are for the eyes.

“Too many people who are not really artists are exhibited in museums. It is a big tragedy because it lowers the standards of the visual arts. They don’t give the real artists the chance to shine, like an Olympic athlete who will never have the chance to compete! Look at Rodin, he had a great talent but he still worked very hard to become one of the greatest sculptors of his time. The very low standards in visual arts nowadays contributes to the fact that people don’t have faith in it anymore.”

The exhibition, which run until Tuesday, is being held at the National Museum of Fine Arts in South Street, Valletta, open daily from 9am to 4.30pm. Admission is free.