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Isabelle Borg worked as a graphic designer at Decca Records in London, where she was born, before graduating in painting at the Camberwell School of Art in 1986. She returned to Malta in 1988, gaining an MA in History of Art at the University of Malta where she has taught Art full-time since 1994. She took a year’s unpaid leave to concentrate on painting landscapes in West Cork,
 Ireland.
Her solo exhibitions include Portraits (National Gallery of Archaeology, Malta,1989), Paintings (Melitensia Gallery, Malta, 1994), Blaue Stunde (University of Augsburg, Germany, 1996), Sol (St. James‚s Cavalier, Centre
for the Arts, Malta, 2001) and a retrospective, Paintings of the last Eighteen Years (National Museum of Fine Arts, Malta, 2002). She has also taken part in a large number of selected group exhibitions in Malta and
abroad, as well as publishing her research. Isabelle is exhibiting with photographer Graham Cooper. In the exhibition ‘Two Islands,’ a collection of Irish and Maltese landscapes, Isabelle’s oil paintings
are shown alongside Graham's giclee prints of manipulated photographic images.
At St. James Cavalier Centre for Creativity, Valletta, from 19 June to 18 July 2004, in the Upper Gallery Halls. She continues to work and exhibit as a painter and has a studio in Floriana. Her work can also be seen at Melitensia Fine Arts and on website www.isabelleborg.com
What do you think pushed you to become an artist? Any family inspiration?
Both my parents are creative, though not as painters, and have always encouraged me to make things. When I was a child and enjoyed drawing and painting they were very happy for me to continue.
Do your paintings represent what you see out there, or is it more what is inside yourself that is coming out?
What I see around me is vital to my work, and this will be interpreted according to my ability to take visual notes, then my memory in how I play with them later. Especially in the case of landscape there’s a strong connection between ‘what is out there’ and ‘what is inside,’ and I think that without forcing it, it will come out. Working towards this exhibition, together with photographic artist Graham Cooper, I was particularly aware of visual spatial composition and how it can affect the result.
Your art is varied in its subject matter - are there any subjects or genres you avoid?
There are no areas in painting that I avoid for reasons other than the subjects may not be presenting themselves at the time - or my way of approaching a painting, which can mean changing it mid-stream. Then, I might want to try another ‘version’ of it, and so a series develops.
Do you see a political role for artists today - and yourself in particular - or is art just mortals trying to create the immortal?
As an art student in London in the 80’s, my small involvement in politics gave me a basis of realising that one cannot detach oneself from what happens around as one is naturally affected by it. Over ten years ago here, I was strongly involved in Moviment Mara Maltija for a while, which was a grassroots movement to support the victims of family violence and lobby for positive legal changes in their favour. I soon realised that a directly active political role for an artist takes up a huge amount of time and energy and is often misinterpreted. The most real social value in art is that it can be shared and understood – not as propaganda, but a communication that gets people interested to look and feel and discover through their visual sense. But talking about the politics IN art itself – that’s another story. There’s a history of those ends as a means to immortality!
You have spent several periods of your life abroad, would you consider moving to another country and working their more permanently?
I already spend a fair amount of time in Ireland, painting too, though I feel that right now my best base is Malta.
You have had several very memorable exhibitions in Malta, which was your favourite and why?
One of the exhibitions I enjoyed the most was together with Ebba von Fersen Balzan, of landscapes of Malta at the Museum of Fine Arts in 1991. It started me off confidently painting landscapes. Also, one that mattered a lot was Portraits in 1989. During the first year I moved here I closely met a number of old and new friends who sat for me.
Besides being an artist you also lecture in art, what does that add to your life as an artist?
Art teacher and artist are different roles. Clarity of approach is essential, and one’s creativity is geared towards the students’ satisfaction at ‘realising’ something with their own abilities. My full-time job is very demanding and fortunately my colleagues and I form a real team. Being directly involved in art education is always an eye-opener. Even in the kind of primitively basic space we have at the Junior College (to also serve the Faculty of Education at University) it keeps one conscious of standards, right from the beginning of an artist’s self-awareness. When students fully put their energy into it the results are encouraging - but teaching in these conditions consumes energy too. I wish students had an environment more suitable to the enjoyment of their work. We badly need a well-equipped art college, with decent facilities for making and showing work in different media, and a timetable geared towards art. A national funding committee might listen to suggestions from people with new ideas, and experience in teaching art at all different levels.
What is your general impression of the state of art in Malta, would you say it is going through a healthy innovative phase?
Malta needs a boost for fine art, which is an odd plant. Some say it needs a fair climate, others reckon it thrives on rocky ground and the minimum fertiliser. We have a high concentration of talent and interest, due to a truly visual Mediterranean culture. But we also have a Fine Arts Section in the Arts Council that may have grand plans but also appears to focus towards a certain type of art. If you start supporting a chosen number categorised as ‘ground-breaking’ you create a kind of inverse conservatism and the situation approaches that of a 19 Century Academy, excluding other artists who feel little interest is taken in what they do.
True originality is exciting, but innovation may be an obsession. Why, for instance, is painting written off by some as not representative of contemporary culture? Any suggestion that a ‘radical’ art group follows the passing fashions of the International Art World (whatever that means) is a joke - but things become a little more serious if the use of public funds is involved.
Preferential treatment is evident in other EU countries - the art now is how to apply to get financial backing for ‘projects.’ Otherwise, it’s down to individual sales and sponsorships, as fine art, in whichever medium, is costly - first to produce, then to show. When pandering to taste or theory, real artistic evaluation goes out the window. Let’s be open to good new ideas (from outside, too) and not limit art in Malta to either being a derivative re-working of concepts, or made with the intention of a sure high percentage of sales. Then, as always has been, the real challenge is to work within boundaries and produce something free and dynamic, and that artists find different as well as mutual areas of interest. And that support for fine art is accessible and less dependant on bureaucracy!
What plans do you have for the future?
As a painter I’ve been invited to represent Malta as one of the ten new EU countries at The Hague in Holland. The project is called ‘Cultural Encounters with Twenty European Artists,’ and will involve creating work there during a three-week period alongside ten selected Dutch painters – the results will be shown in an event opening on the 17 September, in an exhibition on the Hofvijver.
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