Melħ: solo exhibition by Tina Mifsud

The paintings in Melħ executed in oil on board or canvas by Tina Mifsud are based on research that she herself undertook in the last few months, studying people and their bodies as they are in motion underwater. She also photographs people, or their headless bodies, underwater, also making their acquaintance as she approaches them. She has ventured into the sea around Malta and she has immortalised people while swimming and cooling off. The different bodies are often distorted by the sea water; not an easy image to portray with abruptly foreshortened limbs disappearing into the distance.

This collection of paintings is also a personal one to Tina Mifsud since in their production and upon their viewing, she feels a sense of nostalgia of her of long summer childhood days and months spent by and in the sea. There is something very Maltese about this with the sea being such a prominent feature of summers in our small isle.

These paintings also signify a sense of freedom. It is a freedom that Tina seldom feels when she finds herself at the beach being ever so conscious about her own body. And yet, in contrast, the people she sees and studies seem so comfortable and nonchalant. It is this freedom that Tina envies since unlike them, she is too aware of her body.

The sea is captured swiftly in very quick strokes with adequate reflections of the objects, rocks and colours in the water. The subject in itself requires her to work quickly, and this explains the dripping or bleeding pain amply visible on several of these paintings. Tina has never worked with the water as a subject, and while she is experimenting as she goes along, letting it drip as she works, the results are most pleasing and successful.

Each painting provides and immersive experience, in more ways than one, and while there is a sense of freedom to be felt in the swimmers, with the Mediterranean sun visibly gleaming on the water’s surface, there may at times also be a sense of fear and claustrophobia