Xaxa Calleja comments on her exhibition: "I am exhibiting a new series of paintings entitled "The White Space in Between." These are a series of works that I have been working on for a number of years. This series of paintings and painted jewellery are being shown from March 7^th- 28^th at the Wignacourt Museum, Rabat.  The exhibition is open daily from 9:30am to 5pm.

 I found in my works I became more interested in "the background space" and the importance of that space. I was interested in the weight and the density that this space holds.

We need space in order to breathe. Not just physical breathing but breathing space to perceive all that is around us. This space is essential for our well-being. This could also be a metaphor for our own lives, how without that space between things our lives can become chaotic and tangled and lacking clarity.

We are all here occupying this space together yet we all have our different perspectives and different interpretations of what is.  I occupy my own thoughts and moods as fleeting as they are. They alter my perception of time and even space. Each encounter leaving an imprint on my mind.

Perhaps I am trying to simplify things and create order and clarity in a time of so much chaos and confusion. I just want to put down what is essential in my eyes and leave the audience to come up with their own conclusions.

There is a pureness in white that I feel makes the colours more intense, more raw. Each line and stroke has more impact upon the blank space. Yet that white space is essential to our understanding of that object.  I want to create clarity and balance and a sense of calm and peace.

I hope that audiences can feel my own vulnerability in my work. I hope to evoke emotion and feeling through my work. I look at a series of works as a page from my diary showing what I feel at this point in time.

These works are a reflection of how I perceive space at this moment in time. We just know this present moment. This fragile finite moment suspended in time. This is just a small snapshot  of my existence, each moment tied to another with an invisible thread.

This infinite space can just swallow you up leaving you feeling helpless and insignificant. Perhaps my paintings are my way of containing it leaving my imprint on this moment. Yet here I remain occupying this point in space and time waiting for the day that I don't."