Fiorentino

The ‘outsider' connotation as here appended has nothing to do with Albert Camus' famous novel and its hero Meursault, who refuses to conform with the tenets of a society burdened with, among its negative traits, an ingrained hypocrisy.

But this ‘outsider' dabbing has equally come to mean, within its broad artistic terminology, an idiom that is totally natural, alien to convention, and bereft of any forms of insincerely made-up expression. It here concerns Denis Calleja a self-taught artist who is exhibiting, until next Wednesday, a collection of 21 drawings in mixed media at the Galleria Shopping and Entertainment Complex in Fgura.

Just to place ourselves in the right position as to what it all entails, ‘outsider art', which has been gaining extensive recognition, has come to be considered as a type of primitive art style. It is described as an art “made by people who have had little or no formal training in art and who produce art without regard to the mainstream art world's recognition, market-place or definitions.”

Born in 1954, Calleja works as a computing officer at the University of Malta. He has been composing music and writing poems for several years, and is currently producing a CD in aid of Dar il-Kaptan . When he draws he does it in a spontaneous manner, experimenting with a variety of media including felt pens, pastels and glitter.

However it was only during the past year that Calleja finally decided, after quite some time of gestation, to give a try to this ongoing passion to express himself in visual terms. As he himself states, he feels that “he has a kind of positive energy and drive to make him work continuously.” Initially he used to limit himself to the use of special pens, but eventually he thought of adding other material such as glued glitter which helps to add a vital veneer to his drawings.

The results, invariably colourful, unconventional, unpremeditated and verging on primordial shapes, are exquisitely out of the ordinary, bursting forth into rivulets of fantasy which are drawn out from several sources of inspiration. It is enough to take a look at some of the titles that Calleja has given to his drawings – Winged sails, Cells, Strange animal, Crab, Cocoon, Clown, Bird resting, Sea-Horse, Leafed raft, Dragon or Wing – to indicate the wide range of his stimuli

With fishing being one of his hobbies, it is no wonder that several of his creations unconsciously surface from a marine character. According to Louis Lagana, writing an introductory note for this exhibition, his work “is a ‘self-discovery' process with a unique approach to find his true identity.” In a corresponding vein, this type of work is open to different interpretations by its viewers.

The almost unique qualities in the work by Calleja, to which I was first introduced some weeks ago during his preparations for this exhibition, are the fruit of several days of concentrated labour. With their meticulous execution that makes them visually akin to embroidery, and their open invitation for a meditative mood, these drawings distantly remind me of what used to fascinate me in the work of the American artist and polyglot William Driscoll who – it must be over 20 years now – used to live in Gozo in reclusive solitude and occasionally exhibited in Malta. Incidentally I would greatly appreciate to know, from anybody who happens to be reading this review, whatever happened to Driscoll since then.

Back to Denis Calleja, a Tarxien-born artist who now lives in Birkirkara – he has become so engrossed with his work and the excitement of having his first one-man exhibition, that he intends to have in the immediate future a gallery online on the Internet. His type of work, which for him provides several hours of relaxation and of a self-therapeutic nature, lends itself admirably well for anybody wishing to have personalized greeting cards, just decorative items, or simply the enjoyment of surfing in front of a computer monitor.