Green House Effect

This painting stands out a bit from the rest of the Lost in the Ether collection. It’s one of two that doesn’t include a figure, but the physical presence is indeed felt anyway. Earlier this year, on a public holiday, I went to Sa Maison gardens in Floriana, and if you’ve been you would notice the slight state of neglect, which I think is embodied by the enchanting green house you see as soon as you enter the garden. The state of the green house was to me rather charming in it’s decay, filled with plants growing somehow by themselves and, perhaps this is due to my ignorance, but you don’t really see many of wooden green houses like that in Malta. When I walked around it I noticed this side of it was open, with an old rusty chair in the middle (the ones you probably sat on in school where your hair gets caught in the metal screw thing – you know what I mean if you had long hair and grew up in the 00s). It felt like someone was there just not long ago, their presence was still felt and there was something eerie in the air that day, maybe it was just me who felt it. At the time (and still now) I think a lot about climate change and the so called ‘green house effect’ where the planet is warming up at inconceivable rates. The physical representation before me from where the term derived from felt somewhat symbolic. I felt compelled to paint this moment, I wanted to remember it as it was. In fact, I went again a few weeks later to show my friends this green house I came across, and the chair wasn’t there.