Lara Vella will be holding her solo exhibition, Chroma, at Bizzilla Art Space in Floriana, curated by yours truly, throughout this month.

Before we delve into this captivating world of colour, first things first; a quick introduction to Lara Vella. This is my second collaboration with Lara, following her participation in last year's exhibition, Landscape, Seascapes & Imaginary [E]-scapes, at the Grand Master's Palace, held in aid of the Malta Community Chest Fund. (And yes, we'll also be collaborating on the next MCCF exhibition).

She graduated from the University of Malta with a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts and History of Art before furthering her studies at AD'A in Florence, Italy. Working primarily in oil and acrylic, Lara draws inspiration from the natural world, Malta's distinctive landscapes, and the quiet familiarity of everyday subjects imbued with personal memory and nostalgia.

Her paintings combine realism with an expressive, vibrant palette, reimagining the natural world through an almost childlike sense of curiosity and wonder. Rather than documenting nature, Lara invites viewers to experience it emotionally, encouraging a renewed appreciation of places and details that often go unnoticed. As we shall discover in Chroma, nature remains central to her artistic practice, becoming both a source of inspiration and a means of exploring themes of belonging, sanctuary, memory, and our relationship with the environment.

These ideas have been a recurring thread throughout Lara's exhibitions. Following her 2025 solo exhibition, titled Baħar - inspired by the vibrancy of a Mediterranean Summer - she continued this exploration with Seek Sanctuary in 2026, further developing a body of work that encourages audiences to slow down, observe more closely, and reconnect with the beauty, comfort, and vitality found in the natural world.

In this new body of work, executed primarily in oils with a selection of acrylic paintings, Vella invites viewers to slow down and embark on a visual journey through nature's layered immensities, from the boundless expanses of the sky to the intricate, almost invisible architectures woven within leaves, petals, and organic textures. Moving fluidly between the monumental and the microscopic, Chroma becomes an exploration of scale, revealing how wonder resides equally in vast horizons and in the smallest overlooked details.

Cloud formations, shifting light, botanical fragments, and intimate natural surfaces are transformed into painterly encounters that blur the boundaries between observation and memory. Through her vibrant use of colour, considered compositions, and rich textures, Vella presents nature not as a static subject, but as a living, breathing presence in constant transformation. Here, colour becomes more than an aesthetic choice. It is both the subject itself and a narrative thread that guides viewers through the exhibition. Each work encourages a slower way of seeing, inviting audiences to pause, reflect, and immerse themselves in the rhythms, patterns, and quiet spectacles that so often escape everyday attention.

From the act of looking to the pursuit of wonder, that innate curiosity which makes us so human, to the discovery of both the sublime and the intimate, Vella takes us on a journey that, for the sake of this article, I'd like to divide into four sections.

Let's begin with the first one where The Sky is the Limit, which, for Lara, is certainly not the case. Five works demonstrate an incredible bravura in depicting clouds that seem to be composed purely of colour. She plays with scale, capturing fleeting snippets of cloud in smaller works such as Silver Lining, before expanding into the majestic Aurum, where a palette of blues and golden yellows envelops soft clouds illuminated by warm rays of light. The exhibition's titular work, Chroma, executed in delicate pinks and purples, captures a billowing cotton-like cloud, perhaps observed during the fleeting moments of sunset.

In what is perhaps my favourite work (yes, I am always allowed to have a favourite artwork), Agave presents a cloud-speckled sky as the magnificent backdrop to the elongated silhouette of the agave plant. Standing quietly against the bright sky and open countryside, the plant becomes almost monumental in its simplicity. The scene evokes an idyllic landscape that has become increasingly rare, carrying with it a quiet nostalgia for a bygone Malta.

The narrative then moves towards two depictions of Ferula melitensis, in Ferlina and Rise, where Vella adopts a more restrained approach, placing the plant against a pared-back backdrop of sky and sea. In these works, we find ourselves drawn progressively closer to nature, as the paintings begin to reveal increasingly intricate botanical detail.

A similar work introduces another subtle narrative element: a snail perched delicately on a plant. Here, Vella plays with focus and perception. The plant and snail in the foreground are rendered in sharp detail, while surrounding vegetation recedes softly into blur, set against a glowing sunset background.

The final group of works turns towards floral macro studies, slowly delving deeper and deeper into the minute structures of flowers. These works recall Georgia O'Keeffe in the way Vella magnifies elements of nature that are often overlooked. However, while O'Keeffe expands scale into large, immersive compositions, Vella retains a more intimate format, working on relatively small canvases while achieving extraordinary levels of detail. Her palette also differs: where O'Keeffe leans towards abstraction and dreamlike chromatic intensity, Vella remains closer to naturalistic colouration, albeit heightened and carefully intensified.

Even within this final set, there is a clear gradation in the act of zooming. In Bloom, the flower is captured in close proximity, larger than life, rendered in saturated tones of orange and deep pink, emerging from a dense maze of dark leaves.

In Anne, a detailed depiction of Queen Anne's lace is shown from an unusual angle, almost reminiscent of a reddiena (ground firework), with its rotating structure evoking bursts of radiating sparks. In Viola, Vella again explores the tension between focus and blur, isolating the flower's stamens as they emerge from soft areas of defocus.

Finally, two leaves become the subject of investigation. Here, intricate networks are rendered with meticulous precision, forming maps of organic structure that take centre stage. In Paths II, the delicate veins resemble branching trees adorned with clusters of white flowers. In Paths, the perspective shifts further still, becoming almost a bird's-eye view of a countryside landscape, where fields, boundaries, and pathways seem to emerge from within the leaf itself.

At its core, the exhibition reflects on humanity's enduring fascination with the natural world and our instinctive desire to explore it, whether by gazing upward into infinite skies or downward into the delicate veins of a single leaf. Here, nature reveals itself as both a vast universe and an intimate terrain.

Chroma runs until 30 July. Follow on social media for more information. Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 9am to 4pm