Across The Medium — Where Mediterranean nostalgia meets canvas
#2 • Ryan Falzon — Visual Artist & Author • Photos by Bernard Gatt • Location: Żurrieq, Malta
Across the Medium is Stradalia's series of quiet stories shot with artists and makers — short photo essays paired with a brief write-up.
Friday, late August. Żurrieq is quiet and the air still soft (and humid). Ryan meets us at a narrow townhouse and leads the way up—room after room—until we reach a compact studio: easels close together, work pinned and piled, canvases in various stages of finishing. A small fan keeps a steady hush; outside, birds thread a light melody through the morning.
Ryan’s way of starting is simple and direct—notes jotted hastily on the phone, a quick drawing on paper, sometimes gestures straight to canvas—just enough to set a direction without locking anything down. From there, he edits as much as he adds: fragments are placed, others held back so the image can breathe.
Where he paints matters. His oeuvre captures a measure of Mediterranean nostalgia—the decorated, colourful façades, the boisterous livery on old vehicles, the courtyards overflowing with common plants from recycled containers, and the quiet rituals of indoor gardening. The duality—the beauty of abundance and the ache of loss—filters instinctively into the compositions.
Writing sits alongside the pictures. After Sajf, he is more attuned to tempo—to where a picture slows, where it turns, when to leave a passage unspoken. That sense of pacing carries into the studio rhythm: mark, pause, return; let the image catch up with itself before the next move.
Medium shifts change the choices. Printmaking is sequence and commitment—drawing to plate to pull—so decisions happen earlier and with more finality; painting is back and forth, colour that can be moved until it feels right. Recent still-life paintings have pushed the pace quieter still, testing what can be left unsaid while the image holds together.
We keep to the room’s rhythm—pull a frame, set it down, step back; ink on the plate, paint along an edge; look again. When the arrangement feels settled, we stop. Quiet work, allowed to breathe.
Falzon’s next project is ARCANA, a solo exhibition opening at YAH, Via Bramante 13, Milan on 24 October, running until 14 November. The series, developed since 2022, explores the meeting of the sacred and the profane in the Mediterranean life—how symbols, rituals, and beliefs move between religion, superstition, and the everyday.
