INTRODUCTION

      The last ten years of my life have been spent, mostly, in wandering. From Toronto, my birthplace, to the small village of Mellieha in my ancestral homeland of Malta. From Vienna, with one year dedicated to studies in painting, to Munich, where my painting and writing continued in solitude for three years more. From Paris, where I married and bought a studio, to Monaco, where I apprenticed under Ernst Fuchs for a year. For the present, I find myself living in Paris once again...

      All the time during my travels, I have been actively recording my dreams, and making paintings based on their symbolic arrangements. But anyone who looks at my paintings may, at first glance, be daunted by what they see. In some, the figure of Christ appears at their very centre. In others, it is the more alluring figure of a woman. But around them, symbols from different cultures are juxtaposed, their arrangement seemingly a mystery. And behind each assemblage of images lies the inspiration of a dream.

      For their maker, each of these canvases has become a doorway slowly opened and eventually entered through to a more ancient understanding of life. As myths from different cultures have crossed and their symbols combined,the remaining task, for me, has been to read their hidden message. Ultimately, I believe, these compositions attempt to reveal the greater Unity underlying all cultural manifestations of the Sacred.

Through the endless interplay of art, myth, and dream - and the underlying 'image-language' that they share - I have come to see life as a gradual unfolding of the Sacred.

       At night, we speak a more ancient language. During the day, our thoughts are guided by our spoken language, as words fall into subject and predicate arrangements. But in dreams, we think in a much older way, as images fall into enigmatic arrangements which are nevertheless recognizable to us through ancient myth and sacred art. Indeed, art and myth have, since time immemorial, preserved those mysterious arrangements, and rendered explicit their sacred intentions.

      Hence, the greater part of my life has been spent on a quest for this ancient image language. In my writing and my art, I have continually sought to elevate its image-constructs into consciousness - to describe the logic which underlies all arrangements of images. For, ultimately, we are able to arrange images in such as way as to reveal life's underlying holiness and wholeness.

      But none of this is immediately apparent. And so, in the following images and texts, I hope to unveil the inspiration behind my works. It is my hope to set forth in these pages the dawning awareness of a more ancient worldview, which has appeared to me nightly in dreams, arisen from time to time in my reading of myths, and found its expression, ultimately, in my art. I hope these discoveries will open up for you - as they certainly have for me - new pathways of understanding...