John Busuttil Leaver returns to the local art scene with a powerful new exhibition titled Sky, hosted at MSV Life, The Mall, Floriana, from 6 to 29 May. After an 11-year hiatus from exhibiting, Busuttil Leaver offers viewers a poignant and deeply personal body of work, comprising 16 oil paintings created over the past three years. Known for his dedication to the classical oil-on-canvas tradition, the artist's latest work marks a mature and emotive evolution in his art practice.
In Sky, Busuttil Leaver captures the ever-shifting weather conditions of the Maltese landscape, with particular focus on dramatic skies that dominate his compositions. Dark clouds, turbulent atmospheres and fleeting bursts of light serve as metaphors for the artist's own inner journey, revealing a psyche profoundly shaped by recent world events, including the Covid-19 pandemic. In his own words, "the effect of Covid has made me more determined to share my work". This renewed urgency is felt throughout the exhibition, where the skies act as emotional barometers, reflecting states of turmoil, hope and self-examination.
Among the most striking works are Għammar Hill and Chadwick Lakes, two landscapes that exemplify Busuttil Leaver's sensitive approach. Għammar Hill reminds us of an intimate, almost whispered dialogue between land and sky under brooding clouds, while Chadwick Lakes captures a moment of fleeting tranquillity, where water and sky merge in shimmering, fluid motion. These scenes, less commonly depicted in Maltese art, highlight the artist's ability to find poetry in overlooked corners of the local landscape.
Busuttil Leaver's technique remains firmly rooted in tradition, resisting both the nostalgic romanticism that often characterises local realist painting and the extreme avant-garde approaches that reject traditional methods. His commitment to the authenticity of oil painting is unwavering; he warns against so-called modernisations like "water-based oil paints", emphasising the irreplaceable tactile quality and expressive depth of traditional oils.
Interestingly, the artist's initial intention was to focus on Malta's coastal forts, depicted against landscapes painted at different times of day. However, as the work progressed, the sky naturally assumed centre stage. It became, in his words, "a mix of the interaction of wintery cloud formations with the landscape below". This shift allowed for greater freedom, enabling "brush acrobatics" that maintain a balance between realism and abstraction. In the swirling, brooding skies, one senses a profound emotional resonance.
The dark tones prevalent in many of the paintings can be viewed through a psychoanalytic lens as outward projections of the artist's internal state. French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962), who is acclaimed for his contributions to poetics and philosophy of science, reminds us that, "the house, even more than the landscape, is a psychic state" (The Poetics of Space, 1958:72), highlighting how intimately space and emotion are intertwined. In Busuttil Leaver's paintings, the landscape, particularly the ever-shifting sky, becomes similarly charged with psychological meaning. Far from offering mere scenic views, his canvases pulse with emotional intensity.
Carl Gustav Jung (1975-1961) similarly observed that generally the artist draws the content of his works from the outside, what he sees, thus consciousness but as he famously stated, "who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes" (Psychological Reflections, 1953:179). So his belief is that self-awareness in the creative process, suggests that true artistic insight arises not merely from external observation but from the integration of the unconscious with the conscious mind. This sentiment surely resonates strongly in Busuttil Leaver's work, where outer skies and inner emotional weather become inseparable.
Throughout his career, Busuttil Leaver has contributed significantly to Malta's cultural landscape. Yet with Sky, he achieves a new level of expressive maturity, forging a dialogue between the timelessness of Malta's land and seascapes and the transient, often turbulent, human emotions they mirror. His work stands as a quiet yet insistent call for a renewed respect for painting as a vital, living art form.
Sky offers not just a visual experience but an emotional journey, an invitation to contemplate not only the physical world around us but also the inner landscapes we all navigate.
