Shaun Grech- Press

Painting the Outside from the Inside
by Louis Laganà

Times of Malta
18th Feb 2006

"Outsider artist" Shaun Grech depicts the socially unprivileged situations of humans through his strong, bizarre, hybrid creatures and therefore creating a world of his own

More artists in Malta are becoming involved in a type of art known as "outsider art" that has been recognised worldwide many years ago. This term was coined more than 30 years ago by British art historian Roger Cardinal. It is also a term derived from the French art brut and which originally was formulated by Jean Dubuffet (1901-85). It is also known as "raw art".

Who falls under this category of artists? Strictly speaking, they are all those artists who never had formal art education or academic training in fine art. At first, many critics labelled as "outsiders" artists who suffered from some kind of pathology, usually those who had some form of mental illness and those who were considered as outcasts from society, like prisoners.

Outsider art is today more generalised and includes most artists who demonstrate little or no influence from the mainstream art world. Throughout these last decades other art labels referring to "outsider art" were introduced, such as: folk, naïve, self-taught, fantastic and visionary art.

In his latest exhibition, Shaun Grech demonstrates that his real love for themes related to a social context could be given a visual interpretation which at times can shock the audience. His images of people look very primal. In the painting called Homo Patria Obsesivus Territorialis Dementis, used as the flyer for the exhibition, Mr Grech depicted a very suggestive "cry" of a person who is passing through a traumatic situation and is in despair. This work reminds me of the famous The Cry or as it is better known, The Scream by the famous Norwegian painter and printmaker, Edvard Munch (1893). Although Munch's "cry" expresses the existential anguish of humans and evokes fear and isolation, Mr Grech's "cry" is more attributed to pain. The artist transforms his feelings of grief and pain into art. Although one might think that the aesthetic content of Mr Grech's paintings seem to be valued only by a restricted audience, the concepts expressed surely have some kind of appeal for everyone.

I consider this artist as a real "outsider artist", mainly because he is not interested in creating a landscape or an abstract work and does not care much about what other contemporary artists are doing. He is mainly interested in creating situations through the depiction of characters that relate a particular situation. He focuses mostly on expression rather than the real physical appearance of the person.

For Mr Grech the approach to painting is like psychoanalysis. His experiences are transformed in concepts and then expressed in paintings which are more or less psychodramatic. Most of his paintings are not about real persons but rather situations which are expressed out of the ordinary. He gets inspiration from a "word" or a "situation" and even an unconscious activity. A quantity of archetypal figures seems to be continually lurking in his mind. Many of them look very strange, grotesque, with frightening and horrific faces. The artist uses bold, sweeping, thick coats of paint. Layer after layer he finally creates the form of a person, mostly with protruding eyes and pouty lips and teeth larger than the real.

Some of the faces he depicts are seen with an open mouth to inspire a sense of awe. This is done purposely by the painter through his play of lines and colours to address some social issues. Above all, Mr Grech's art is a reflection of what is happening to the human psyche.

Some of Mr Grech's early forms were mostly androgynous, but now they have definitely become male or female. Sexuality is a major theme in his recent exploration of other human forms. He creates situations which emerge unconsciously in his paintings. This is shown by using a strong, typical, aggressive childlike style but with a high level of sophistication. We find works like Self Pornicator, Self-Perpetrator and others which tend to produce a kind of physical and psychological frailty that make the viewer uneasy. I argue that these are "psychological portraits" that explain clearly the hidden spiritual world of the creator.

Another typical character repeated in some of his works is the man with a trilby hat. For example, in Pure Breed no Muscle, the emphasis is on the deformity of the face. Eyes bulging out of proportion, and mouth larger than the normal stretching out characterise the constant struggle of humans for life. The hat is there to create style and distinguish the class of this personality. The hat becomes a social symbol. The painting is a straightforward visual statement created by the artist to address in a subtle way the problems of cultural tolerance that is lacking in contemporary society.

Mr Grech started to show interest in art at a very early age but he never had formal art education. Actually he started taking painting seriously early in 2004 when in his home he used to spend hours painting and producing a massive body of work which served mostly as a therapeutic function. This served also as the initial stage to set forth to the public his thoughts, concepts and feelings by providing maps of his own strange inner world. This is the artistic journey of an outsider artist.

As British professor Colin Rhodes put it in his seminal book on outsider art published in 2000, Outsider Art, Spontaneous Alternatives: "One of the most striking features of outsider art is its general tendency to present the world in transcendent or metaphysical terms. Visual images reveal that which would otherwise remain hidden from view thanks to the special insight of their creators."

After his undergraduate studies at the University of Malta, Mr Grech spent some time in Malta doing odd jobs but later on he grasped the opportunity to go abroad and experience voluntary work in Guatemala, in Latin America. This was in the year 2000. During his two-year stay in this exotic country, the artist encountered not just the astonishing blend of cultures and people but also the beauty of the colourful imagery of indigenous life and crafts. He also became interested in the current situation of the country. Poverty and other social problems of this country were for him an embedded wound that permeates every dimension of culture.

After his return from Guatemala, he started work with Sedqa where he stayed for three years but did not feel fit to continue the type of work. Today he is dedicating most of his time to painting. As an outsider artist, Mr Grech is one of those artists who, in the course of these last few years, have stubbornly evolved an idiom, with a mindset that any contemporary painter would not influence him in subject and expression. I am sure that his "masked" confidence would drive him to the point of success.

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