Churches

One thing I have been doing since I decided to stop painting is take stock of the work I've done recently. A lot of it has been sold and, regrettably, I have no record of most of the work, except the most recent. The following are paintings of church and palace interiors - a collection in the making that was aborted rather abruptly when I realised that it was time for soul searching, not production. The paintings are not marked by an asterisk as they are currently being displayed in a local gallery for sale - I need money to pay for renovations in the house of the woman who will soon be my wife.

Hopefully, they'll sell for a decent price although I am not very hopeful after three interested buyers backed off when I informed them that the paintings are smaller than A4. They felt that 200 euros was too hefty for a painting that size, which is something I truly and honestly do not understand. Let me be clear. I am aware that aesthetics does not bear a one-to-one relationship with market price, the former being the domain of the artist and the art critic, the latter of the art dealer and art buyers. These two players - the dealers and the buyers - set the rules of the price game. They decide on the criteria and there's every reason to suppose that aesthetics will not be the dominant factor in the determination of those criteria. However, I would never have guessed that size should feature so prominently!

Actually, it makes you suspect that these market players have imported this factor from some other sector, possibly the home decorations market. Indeed, it is not uncommon at all to find paintings for sale along with sofabeds and wardrobes in furniture and home furnishing shops. Maybe the Maltese art market is seen by its players as an extension of the home decoration market. It sure sounds very, very, very philistine, very middleclass, very 'small'.

Most of my work is this size because I do not have a studio. I paint in my bedroom at my parents' house. Once I move in with Erika, I will eventually rent out a garage to paint in and maybe I'll start producing larger paintings. But this is not an issue and I wouldn't be even complaining about these people weren't it for the fact that I happen to need the money at the moment. In other circumstances, I would just ignore these philistines who cannot see more in a work of art than just a piece of furniture.