Life and Art as Prayer

Life and Art as Prayer Commentary by Jonathan Evens Cite Share Show Bible Passage In the 1950s, together with artists such as Frank Portelli, Josef Kalleya, and Hugo Carbonaro, among others, Antoine Camilleri laid the foundations for several artist groups that heralded the birth of Maltese Modernism. In Prayer, a mixed-media self-portrait from 1982, we see the artist, then aged 60, in his cellar studio surrounded by thirteen artworks from across his innovative career which illustrate the main themes of his oeuvre. This clay painting shows the artist at work while giving us a glimpse into wider aspects of his life, including his relationships with the people who feature in the paintings recreated on the studio’s walls—members of his family and others who modelled for him. He is surrounded by his work—past, present, and future (yesterday, today, forever)—and stands at his table reaching for his tools like a priest celebrating Mass at the altar. Light streams into the cellar from a grille above his head to illuminate him, while incised onto his forehead is a cross. The light of inspiration, the mark of the cross, and the priest-like actions of the artist; these elements of the image combine to suggest the way in which Camilleri viewed his work and life as an act of prayer. His prayerful activity is a thread linking the diverse elements of his life and work together. Joseph Paul Cassar writes that Prayer is ‘a contemplative work’ in which the ‘creative act is a work of prayer; a divine act’. Camilleri ‘stands still and serious, overtaken by beams of light’ which create ‘an aura around him’ and descend ‘onto the working table where he draws and paints.’ The artist ‘is transformed by the spiritual experience’ and by these ‘rays of inspiration’ (Cassar 2023: 56). In evoking such associations, Camilleri depicts his quiet life working with his hands in his studio as a holy life. In this respect, it is a vocation that fulfils Paul’s charge to the Christians in Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 4:1–12). References Cassar, Joseph Paul. 2023. Antoine Camilleri’s Prayer: A Critical Analysis (Malta: Heritage Malta)