Today, there is a vast array of visual artists working with different media and stylistic modes.Some of these artists never had any formal art education but at a certain point in their life they felt the urge to create images and present their work to the public. These artists come from various backgrounds and sectors of society. Their work usually shows no influence from the mainstream art world and includes what is known as art brut, non-traditional folk art, self-taught art, and visionary art. This is the world of 'Outsider Art'. Outsider artists look inward by depicting their 'private worlds', that is, their emotion life and the unconscious.
Well known, Maltese Outsider artist Zepp Cassar, who emigrated to Australia 1989. holding his first personal art show called 'Marinara'in Malta [May 2010] at the St.James Cavalier, Centre for Creativity, Valletta. Cassar was born in the bakers'town, Qormi, and spent his early years with the Nuns at 'Jesus of Nazareth' Home in Zejtun because he was coming from a very large family of nine children and also family circumstances. These years were very influential on the artist's life.
Cassar's work is inspired mostly by images of the fishing village of Marsaxlokk, which remained in his memory since childhood. As a child he enjoyed and experienced the beauty of the traditional, rural Maltese life and the scenes with the fishing nets and colourfully painted boats which crowded the waterfronts. This was a joyous period for Cassar, as he describes:'My senses would come to life as my eyes pop out of their socket at this dazzling way of life with the fascinating shimmering catch and the daily churning feast of this fishing village on the blue Mediterranian Sea'.
The sea, rocks, varous species of fish , seahorses, sea urchins and weeds with their colourful spectrum of vibrant colours enthralled the artist to express his visual memories on paper. Other drawings and paintings lavishly illustrate the typical Maltese countryside with its rubble walls which devide the fields and protect the crops from the wind and other elements of nature. Every colourful mark on paper is made with spontaneity and expressed directly from his 'raw'imagination without any preconceived thoughts. Cassar is today an internationally acclaimed auto didactic artist who experiments with different mediums and techniques and spend most of his time travelling and working in Sydney, France, Vietnam and Mata.
[Written: Louis Lagana of the University of Malta].
