Feature

The priest who does art with a passion
- by Natalino Fenech for The Times of Malta

When you are an artist and have a passion for art flowing through your veins, being self-critical about your work is the only way to improve your art. And if you want to meet a classic example of this adage, all you have to do is meet Fr Charles Vella, a Gozitan who lives in St Ursula Street, Valletta.

Fr Vella studied art restoration in Italy and restored a number of important paintings found in private collections as well as large works located in churches.

But besides being a restorer and an artist, Fr Vella has recently started experimenting with terracotta figures, making pasturi, crib figures, but instead of sticking to the old Maltese traditional style, he began making them in the Neapolitan way, making heads, legs and arms from special clay, hollowing out the clay and then baking them.

If they are not hollowed, they just explode when baked in the oven, he explains. Glass eyes are fitted in faces. The body parts are then joined with a wire frame dressed with straw, intricately painted in oil colours and laboriously clothed.

"The embroidery on the clothing is made for me by Anna Balzan, who is really good at it," he very humbly says, as if his work is less important.

Fr Vella is currently working on a set of about 60 figures for a large crib that will be exhibited at the Banca Giuratale in Gozo later this year. He has less than half the cast ready for his "stage", for his crib will look like a snapshot of one of the most important dramas in history of mankind. But that does not dishearten him. "I tend to work faster and better under pressure," he says, toying with a piece of moist clay.

"Usually I work on the figures late at night. It is not unusual for me to be working at two or three in the morning. I have my priestly duties to attend to during the day, apart from lecturing at the university," he says.

Boundless energy pulsates through his fingers as he speaks. You could almost see the buzzing in his brain, transmitting commands to his fingertips. His enthusiasm is contagious and gets you into his spirit. Before you know it, he has formed a hand, with veins showing over the palm of the hand.

"I am very impatient, I want to see instant results and I am really happy working with clay as you see immediate results," he says.

Old oil paintings line the walls of the room he is using as a studio. They are all waiting to be restored. Fr Vella looks at them and frowns. "Many will want them back before Christmas to decorate their homes. Restoration is very time consuming. Terracotta gives you more instant results. It is more fun to work with too. In every figure I do I often combine traits from characters I see or know," he says.

A perky, aggressive woman he has in his crib has to carry the cross of arthritis and the fingers on her hands are a little swollen at the joints and contorted. The proverbial ghageb has his tongue wedged between his teeth in awe. One of the three kings has a dirty shave look. The detail on these small statutes is incredible.

"The crib will be crowded and I might fit in more figures than I thought I would initially. I could fit in a boy or girl peeping from between the characters," he said.

In addition to the crib, Fr Charles is also working on figures for another crib destined for a wealthy person in France, who is coming to collect them with a private jet later on. "These are the first works I am sending abroad," he says, looking at the busts of Mary and Joseph he is working on.

Although still unpainted and with empty eye sockets as it is still unbaked, Mary could be seen with an angelic serene look and a pair of full lips.

Remarking about it brings out the human streak in him: "They would say she had silicone treatment if she had those lips these days," he says with a wry smile.

He has signed them "and because they are going to France, I proudly wrote MALTA after the signature," he says. And yet the signature will be covered when the figures don clothes.

Fr Vella does not use moulds but shapes the figures with his own hands. "You have to feel the figure developing at your finger tips. You do it hurriedly. When you have the urge, the impulse, you just do it and get it right the first time you try. Alla prima, as the Italians would say, you get it right immediately. But only because it has been cooking inside your head. It is not your fingers that will be doing it. Your fingers will just be chasing your thoughts," he says.