Description

Matthew Mifsud was born in Luqa, Malta. He attended the University of Malta where he read Chemistry and Biology. After a brief stint working in the pharmaceutical industry, he moved to Edinburgh where he completed a Masters in Creative Advertising.

Moving to London, he started his career as an art director at various ad agencies, where he was involved in the rebranding of easyJet and relaunching British staple brands such as Pukka Pies and Vimto. His work in advertising heavily influences his current style. He also did a brief stint at the Royal National Theatre as the deputy art director.

He has been involved in several small exhibitions, but his most recent one saw him exhibiting at the Royal Academy as part of their Summer exhibition and at the Brick Lane gallery.

The art style is heavily geometric, with very precise lines and clean separation between the colours. It creates order. In fact, I find the process of painting these pieces highly therapeutic because it contrasts a lot with the feelings of anxiety and other emotions that are twisted and flow within each other. 

Generally, the idea is that I like to think of every canvas as a small window allowing the viewer to see an alternative version of our world, as an escape hatch. The use of acrylic paint allows me to inject bright bold colours in the piece, create those sharp distinct areas and at the same time rather flat, allowing for the canvas texture to come through, which adds a bit of softness to each section.

The directions of the brush stroke also complement the overall perspective of the piece. Together with the shadow, this allows me to create a 3D world on a flat surface. Speaking of the shadows, I like to mix the paint with matte mediums in order to reduce reflections as much as possible and truly represent these shadowy areas as the places where there is less light. In a way without these parts, the painting would be flat and uninteresting and without any depth.