Medium: Mixed Media

Size: 39.37″ x 39.37″

Year: 2009

Read more about Paul Cosquieri

   $ 4000.00

Paul Cosquieri was born in Gibraltar in 1963, and from a very early age he showed a keen interest in drawing and painting. In early Infant School Paul showed a predisposition to conveying ideas and concepts in the form of drawings and paintings. Later on, in secondary school, Paul won a great many competitions in the field of art and design, including his first commission for an 11 X 3 ft canvass depicting a sea battle involving Nelson’s Victory. This painting is now on permanent display on board the British Navy’s frigate RFA Olwen.

In 1982 Paul was awarded a scholarship from the Government of Gibraltar to study at the prestigious Chelsea School of Art in London, where he undertook a one-year foundation course in Art and Design. Following this year, during which he experimented in many different aspects of Art and Design, including Fine Art, Product Design, Fashion and Textile Design, and Graphic Design, he decided to concentrate on Graphic Design, which had always been one of his key interests in the varied spectrum of the arts field. This decision was also greatly influenced by the better job prospects offered by Graphic Design as opposed to Fine Art, and by the fact that he was contractually obliged by his scholarship to return to Gibraltar once he’d finished his B.A. Hons. Degree Course. At the time, as is still the case today, Fine Art did not offer the same job security as an applied Graphic Design course.

Paul returned to his native Gibraltar in 1987 and began working in GBC Television as a Graphic Designer, following this with employment as senior designer for a local advertising agency. Deciding to go into business for himself, in 1991 he set up123 Printers, a company specialising in design and printing. During these years Paul concentrated, and indeed channelled, his creative instincts into his design work and the day-to-day running of his business. The years from 1991 to 1997 can be described as Paul’s ‘dry period’ in relation to Fine Art and Painting. It was in 1997 when Paul again put paint on canvas, producing “9 Rocks”, which he entered in the Gibraltar International Art Exhibition. However, it was 2002 before his business and family commitments finally permitted him to devote some time to his lifelong passion. From 2002 to the present day Paul has been actively involved in painting, and has also dabbled in sculpture.

Paul first received recognition for his work in 2004, when his painting “The Smoker” was highly commended in the 31st Gibraltar International Art Exhibition. Later that year Paul won second prize with his painting “Rock Formations 5″ in the 2004 Spring Art Festival in Gibraltar. 2005 proved to be highly successful for Paul, when in February his painting “Rock Formations 3″ hit the jackpot and obtained the much-coveted First Prize in the 32nd Gibraltar International Art Exhibition. The world-renowned UK artist Anthony Whishaw, who also studied art in London’s Chelsea School of Art, where Paul undertook his foundation course, judged this competition. In 2005
Paul also won the Alwani prize for the best Gibraltar painting in the Gibraltar Spring Art Festival.

ABOUT HIS WORK
Paul’s work is characterised by his many influences and by his innate desire to push the boundaries of whatever he is doing. If what you are after is a pretty painting, then forget about Cosqui. His work has more to do with experimenting than with reproduction. Paul’s art can be divided into three different categories: Painting, Sculpture and Life Drawing.

PAINTING
In painting, Paul is currently engrossed with texture and moulding, using a wide range of media. His Rock Formation series, which uses the Rock of Gibraltar as the major theme and starting point, is a clear example of what Paul is trying to achieve. He uses the structure of the Rock as a foundation from which to embark on one of his many different quests into texture, form, shape, colour, line, or a combination of all of these, nearly always resulting in a representational, yet abstract painting. Paul’s paintings are abstract paintings in their purest form that somehow manage to maintain an umbilical cord to their original subject. His current influences range from Picasso to Miquel Barcelo, Manolo Valdes and Antonie Tapies, amongst others.

SCULPTURE
Paul’s sculpture is quite unique in that he uses the medium as a transitory one. He does not use sculpture for sculpture’s sake, but rather as a quest into form and shape, which he then uses for his paintings. His few sculptures show a clear search into pure form, primarily concentrating in the human body as a starting point. The work of Italian sculptor Brancussi is perhaps Paul’s greatest current influence. His sculptures also reflect his great passion for anatomy and the study of the human form as a means of expression.

LIFE DRAWING
This interest in anatomy comes vividly to the fore in Paul’s life drawings. All his drawings demonstrate his quest to understand what lies beneath the skin, as if in so doing he might gain a deeper insight into humanity itself. Paul’s life drawings are seldom ‘nice’, and more often than not present a crude and harsh representation of the human form in a stark and uncompromising way. It comes as no surprise then, that Paul is an admirer of the work of Egon Schiele and Lucian Freud.

HIS RECENT WORK AND ACTIVITIES
Paul is currently developing his series titled “Wall Paintings” for his next exhibition and it features his most refreshing work to date. Under the self-coined term “Abstract Popism”, Paul has developed a unique style of painting, which although mainly Abstract in style and content, also carries an element of Pop Art and Pop Culture in the way he has arbitrarily employed the use of collage consisting of imagery primarily extracted from social magazines and product packaging. Paul then peels off part of these images leaving only random bits of the original print, which mingle with the various layers of paint creating a unique effect. The end result is very reminiscent of deteriorating roadside Billboards hat were the initial inspiration for this work and which Paul believes are of great aesthetic abstract beauty and which reflect our modern day consumerist society. These billboards also serve to show how time and the elements alter physical reality in the same way as ! does an artist by slowly eroding away at the different layers of posters leaving different areas exposed and creating a new plane or layer which works as an abstract piece of art in its own right.

On a different front, Paul has recently embarked on a new venture where he is presenting an art series for GBC Television. It consists of 12, half hour programmes in which Paul tackles various techniques he normally employs in his art and also explains a few commonly known, yet frequently misunderstood contemporary art definitions. Every programme sees Paul attempting to complete an entire painting in the technique and or styled chosen for the day. The twelve programmes have been filmed in Paul’s studio. The idea to do an art programme has been an ambition of Paul for a long time but had had to be postponed on various occasions due to work or personal commitments. Eventually, both Paul and Producer/Director Andrew Agius from GBC managed to get their heads together around a style and format which is both new and refreshing and as Paul mentioned, “the series is very much in line with modern TV Food shows such as those by the likes of Jamie Oliver, Rick Stein, Gary Rhodes e! tc but where the food been cooked has been replaced by painting material and the recipes by artistic styles”. The series is currently aired on Tuesday evenings at 9pm and repeated Thursday evenings at 10.30 pm.

Lastly, one of Paul’s paintings titled Rock Tourist which formed part of his “Between The Rock and a Hard Place” exhibition held in 2007 has been recently selected by the Gibraltar Government to represent Gibraltar in a permanent exhibition in London of paintings by all member states within the Commonwealth of Nations.