Rigby Graham - Watercolors of Malta
(Miranda Publishers, 2008, 128pp., cover: Wied tal-Qlejgħa, Gozo)
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The prominent British artist Rigby Graham has been a frequent visitor to Malta, where he has painted in all kind of weather. His watercolours have captured a great deal of the rugged beauty of these islands. His tendency is to avoid touristic sites and seek the more secluded places. This way he has left a lasting memory of our disappearing countryside; an art critic once likened him to “a war artist recording how we’re blitzkrieging our own environment”.
Victor Fenech, who has known him for over three decades, produced this book to celebrate their friendship. It is an attractive volume which reproduces a good amount of Graham’s watercolours, to which Fenech has woven his own narrative snatches of Maltese history as well as references to localities that Graham has captured in his art.
The volume is further enhanced by the participation of people who have known and worked with Graham in his native Leicester: the gallery owner (and his agent) Mike Goldmark, the Dutch poet-private printer Hans van Eijk, and the author-researcher Derek Deadman. But everything revolves around Graham’s mature compositions, often drawn from unusual angles, full of light and textures. Fenech’s added use of a number of poems from his ‘Malta Cycle’ completes this innovative poet-artist dialogue. |
Reviews:
“Foreign artist who painted Malta”
(double-page pictorial spread),
The Times, 21.11.2008
Mario Azzopardi: “Id-disturbi ta’ Rigby Graham dwar Malta”, In-Nazzjon, 24.2.2009.
Charles Flores:“L-artist modern Ingliż li pinġa lil Malta tal-lum”, l-orizzont, 25.2.2009.
“Celebrating the colours of Malta”,
The Sunday Times, 3.5.2009
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