When two seasoned artists come together in a joint exhibition, it takes a considerable amount of complicity for them to pull it off successfully. Doranne Alden and Paul Caruana are experienced watercolourists whose works grace many a collection, both locally and abroad. Their preferred genres are different, but with Passage of Light they have worked independently yet in tandem, creating a collection of watercolours, imbued with their own individual take on light.
Light - the most obvious requirement for a visual artist to function, to materialise that which fills the imagination and to render it alive, whichever medium is adopted. And yet, it is the hardest element to capture and bring forth on canvas. I have met several artists who have found themselves struggling with the issue of light and how to grasp it, how to glorify it and how to make it glow out of their paintings. And I still remember the one artist hailing from northern Europe, who proudly and wholeheartedly claimed that she had effectively discovered "light" in Malta.
It is interesting to listen to Doranne and Paul recount how this exhibition came to be. Working in different advertising agencies in Valletta for a number of years, Doranne and Paul knew of each other's work, since the graphics community was relatively small. Then came social media which connected them remotely. One day they were jokingly discussing their common Caruana surname (Doranne's maiden name is Caruana) and Paul promptly suggested they should have a Caruana exhibition. This ignited the process of planning a joint show. They first met in person with face masks on, during the immediate aftermath of Covid-19, while seeking out a venue for this exhibition in Valletta, which is where I first came to know of their plans. It can literally be said that art brought them together and that light led them to prepare for this show.
I have known Doranne for a long time, visited her studio and written about her work as well. She is an avid plein air artist, who spends hours painting out in the open. She will visit the same location several times a year, at different times of day during the same season, looking at the atmospheric nuances that she transmits onto canvas, and turns into nostalgic, romantic seascapes and landscapes. Yet her paintings are not staid or pastoral but curiously vivacious and tumultuous. She rarely puts people in her paintings and those who are allowed in, are nobody we could know, barely shadows against the light. Her work is essentially concerning the islands' natural surroundings and their powerful evanescence - the rugged rocks, the swirling waves, the vibrant colours of the seasons and the Mediterranean light as it changes with time. She expresses the passage of light with fervour and passion that grapple with a sense of reminiscence.
Caruana does not paint in the open, but fascinatingly enough, although he creates his works in a little studio space at home, the great majority of his works depict life and activity out of doors. I first came to know of his works several years ago when I worked in a newsroom and a press release about one of his exhibitions landed on my desk. I liked his paintings immediately. He draws on his astute observational skills to recall and depict what I could define as cinematographic moments. He literally captures episodes from the day to day goings-on of simple Maltese life with its uniqueness, its social fabric, traditions, habits and peculiarities. There is a heart-warming character to his peopled works, persons whose faces are barely discernable but whom we might associate with our old neighbourhood, with the street we grew up in or the village street we walk through every Sunday. Some of his characters are still in the here and now, recognisable, yet anonymous. With every painting, Caruana places light and the passage of time as the key element to indicate what side of life is happening at that particular moment of the day, be it mid-day, dawn or dusk.
Through their experimentation with paint and water, Doranne Alden and Paul Caruana have together placed light at the heart of this exhibition and filled it with that which makes Malta so intense, energetic and enticingly curious. Is light a beacon in the dark, a sunset waiting to happen, a shimmer on a wave or the first light of morning outside a balcony? Whichever painting one looks at, light is there to be seen.
The exhibition, which is curated by Marika Azzopardi, runs until 2 November at the MSA, Palazzo de La Salle, 219 Republic Street, Valletta - Mondays to Fridays from 9am to 7pm; Saturdays 9am to 1pm. Entrance is free.
