The Big Painting - The Farsons Mural

The BIG Painting



When Arthur Muscat of the Farsons Foundation approached me with the prospect of painting something for the stairwell of the new administration building, I was obviously intrigued. I love painting large and this sure looked like it was going to be really large. When we visited the site, Arthur only had the top half of the wall in mind but looking at the available space I wanted to paint the whole surface. This measured approximately 7.5m x 7.5m . A daunting surface area. I had never painted on that scale before.

But what a challenge! The building’s design is in the contemporary ‘industrial’ look with exposed beams and pipework. The colours of the interior are mostly greys and blacks. A very cool up-to-date look but I thought it needed a pop of colour so my very first decision was that whatever I would paint, it would be colourful.

But paint what?

It had to be a theme that would connect with Farsons of course. I made several sketches and about four or five 1 in 10 large scale colour sketches. I played around with themes of parts of the Farsons brewery buildings, with Farsons products, with Farsons employees, with parts of the Farsons industrial plant. Eventually these were whittled down to about three which were presented to the Board of Directors for their input. There was a general consensus that the one showing parts of the bottling plant and the assembly line was the preferred one. The subject brought the factory floor into the administration building reminding the white collar workers every day what Farsons was really about.

Now “all” that was left to do was to actually paint it.

The first task was to measure the available wall space and TBA architects were tasked with this job. Having got the accurate dimensions the area had to be split into “easy to manage” sized panels. I had already decided that I would use acrylic paint as a medium as it is non oderous, dries quickly and is easy to maintain. All three factors are essential in an office environment that was already in use. I was going to paint these panels in my studio in Lija where although I had sufficient space for the width of the painting I did not have the 7.5m of height.

So the whole area was divided into 24 panels of a size that I could physically handle myself without needing to have to get help all the time. This gave me more freedom. I had also decided that I would use ‘artist’ grade materials throughout and treat it as I would any other painting I do. So I used preprimed stretched canvases as my support. As this was to be a permanent display and it was important that the panels remained as rigid as possible over time, I sourced aluminium “Museo” stretchers that would run the least risk of warping with heat and humidity over time. These were assembled and the canvas fabric stretched over them by my trusted frame maker Joseph Borg of Gozo Arts.

I painted a blue ground over the primer and then sketched the whole painting in, in charcoal. My son Ben and I had built a framework in my studio that could support 8 canvases at a time. That way I could carry strokes from one canvas to another so that the painting would visually flow seamlessly. I started at the “top” and worked my way down. When the first 8 were “finished” I replaced the top four with four new ones under the other four. A bit like an old fashioned type writer carriage. Painting, mostly up on scaffolding, took another 8 months. When I had completed it in one direction I then went through it all again from left to right to make sure that lines would look straight and that the perspectives looked right.

Once the painting of the panels was completed the canvases were transferred back to the frame maker for a bit of refurbishment from the wear and tear of having been handled for that length of time. While they were still there we varnished the canvases, first with a spray varnish to fix any loose charcoal and then with coats of matt varnish by brush for a good coating for protection.

The most frustrating thing about painting this picture was that throughout I was never able to see the painting as a whole. I took photos as I went along and tried to imagine the whole but I couldn’t see the whole thing. Once it was hung in place, because of the stairs in the foreground, there would not be the possibility to take a photo of the painting in isolation. So we waited for a calm sunny day and laid out the canvases on the ground outside and rented a cherry picker upwhich my photographer son Ben went to take shots of the painting. It was a very emotional day for me seeing my painting for the very first time. My friend Debbie Caruana Dingli summed it up well when I later described how I felt to her. She said it must have been a bit like having a baby. You’ve lived with it for several months and know it well and it’s so exciting to finally get to see it .


Next was to get a supporting frame work, designed by in house Farsons Architect Karl Borg, installed on the wall on which the panels could be hung, These were installed by Manwel Lautier and his crew helped by the Farsons master craftsman Joseph Muscat under the supervision of Farsons Foundation curator Martin Spiteri. This proved to be a laborious job but was expertly carried out.

It was only once it was installed and in place that I truly realised the scale of what I had painted and was almost surprised by how it had come together. A bit like a baby.