Tilbake til barndomsbygda

Olaug Vethal tilbrakte barndomsårene på Kløfta. Først tre år etter kunstnerens død stilles flere av verkene hennes ut i barndomsbygda.

Exalting the virtues of a simple lifestyle

Lisa Gwen

It's been just over a year since Norwegian-born artist Olaug Vethal passed away. Sadly I'll have to admit that I hardly knew Ms Vethal... yet when faced with the force of her paintings I feel that she is still very much alive ‒ her artistic temperament and personality forever captured in each of her works.

A retrospective exhibition in her honour is currently showing at St James Cavalier. Grazzi Malta... showcases 40 memorable works of art which Ms Vethal executed in various stages of her life.

Ms Vethal's paintings are both a tribute to expressionism and to fauvism; from the latter period, the works of Andre Derain and Auguste Macke are those which especially come to mind. Her paintings possess that same vibrancy and intensity as did the works of the fauves ‒ those same colours that at once both blind and hypnotise you. Thus, her palette could not simply be described as extensive - because in actuality it was much more than that! It was wonderfully rich, made up of all the imaginable bright and incandescent colours available to her.

Ms Vethal's method may be described as a figurative action-painting. Even though I have never witnessed her while at work, her paintings clearly reveal and betray the immense physical energy with which she executed her work. They seem highly spontaneous and uncalculated, yet every brushstroke and each colour is applied on the surface with sheer confidence and exactitude as though she were just fulfilling the painting's inevitable destiny. Besides the multitude of colours, Ms Vethal was also accustomed to using a wide variety of mediums, such as ink, watercolours, pastels, oils and acrylics, among others. However, whichever medium she used and no matter what subject she chose to portray, her line and manner remain distinctly recognisable.

Abstraction was not a genre with which she seemed particularly preoccupied - rather, there are no such works on exhibit here, yet I have no doubt that she would have ventured towards and experimented with non-representational forms. Her ink drawings and her figure studies are highly abstracted in actual fact. Often, a few simple lines are all she used to denote a figure in movement, yet it is clearly all she needed to depict her subject. This is especially evident in both the paintings Dancers and Dancers II. Her knowledge and confidence with abstraction is to be seen in the details of her works rather than in their entirety.

Most of her paintings possess an urgency of line, which almost makes it seem as though she were always in a hurry to finish one work in order to commence the next... perhaps she was afraid that she had not captured every possible movement, every desired action or all of the engaging ripples in the surrounding atmosphere. Whatever she was trying to bring out in her work, I think she more than successfully achieved. Her paintings of jazz players transport me into a world of music and memories; her paintings of divers, boats and bathers make me feel the sea breeze, taste the sea spray and feel the warmth of the sun on my cheeks and shoulders...

I guess herein lies the magic of Ms Vethal's work - that her paintings are portals into her world, and through the use of bold colour and the fluidity of her brushstrokes ‒ her obvious passion for life and art becomes infectiously contagious. We have much to be thankful for... she has truly given us a great gift!

Friday, 7th March 2008 - 00:00CET

Northern light

This month, the Upper Galleries at St James host an exhibition by the late Norwegian artist Olaug Vethal.

Christine Xuereb

In February of last year we mourned the death of an outstanding and prolific artist who gave so much to our shores through her art. Her name was Olaug Vethal (1946-2007) and she was of Norwegian nationality. She first visited our islands in 1988 and knew that this was where she belonged. She fell for the landscapes with beautiful heritage sites, the warmth of the Maltese villagers, the climate and much more.

She studied art at the College of Design of the University of Hamburg and later taught the subject to students of all ages.

On her arrival in Malta she painted practically every corner of the island: temples, bathers, dancers, villagers, villages and seascapes. As a personality she was very active and very athletic. Through her art we can see this. She was also very prolific and experimental in her art. Malta's bright light had a strong impact to her works, her warm and loud reds, yellows, black and greens turned to softer pinks, yellows and blues. Until there was no sign of any black, except for the strong expressionistic series of paintings following Caravaggio's themes. She also taught art privately during this time, and in 1996 she began teaching A Level Art at De La Salle Sixth Form. This she continued to do until her final year 2007.

When one looks at her art, one sees great expression of all that she saw around her. But it was also full of colour, passion and joy, as if she had been listening to jazz - which she probably had, since it was another of her great passions. She would never miss the jazz festivals held every year in Malta. In fact she would bring her paints and canvasses to them and paint away while the musicians played.

It was during her last years that she took on a different role with her art and this was when she started introducing the metaphysical into her works, and preferred to be called a metaphysical artist.

Grazzi Malta: An exhibition of works by Ms Vethal, painted during her years in Malta 1988-2007, will be held at the St James Centre of Creativity between February 26 and March 30. It is being sponsored by the Malta Tourism Authority, Marsovin Wines, Poulton's Print Shop, the National Lotteries Good Causes Fund, Citadel Insurance and the Strickland Foundation.