About the artist
I paint the colours a place leaves behind.
Mafduarte Studio is a painter working from a limestone studio in Malta, making expressive work about colour, memory and the small rituals of home.
Her story
From a box room in Birgu to a studio by the creek
I grew up between two islands and a lot of ferries, which is probably why the sea keeps turning up in everything I make. I studied design, worked in it for six years, and painted in the evenings until the painting refused to stay in the evenings.
The studio now sits on the second floor of an old townhouse with green shutters and a lemon tree on the terrace that produces exactly nine lemons a year. Morning light comes in flat and blue; by four o'clock the walls go gold. Both of those turn up in the work.
I paint mostly in oil and soft pastel, usually on linen, occasionally on board when I want something more stubborn to push against. The subjects are ordinary — a table, a doorway, bougainvillea against limestone — because ordinary things are where most of a life actually happens.
What I want from a painting is quite simple: that it makes a room feel like someone lives there, and that it still has something to say five years later.
The process
Four stages, repeated until it works
01
Noticing
Walks, photographs and quick sketchbook notes. Most paintings start as a colour I can't stop thinking about.
02
Mixing
Colour is mixed by hand in small batches — no two blushes across two paintings are ever quite the same.
03
Layering
Layers go on, get buried, get scraped back. The painting is a record of everything it used to be.
04
Finishing
Edges painted, surface left unvarnished, signed on the reverse and photographed before it is wrapped.
Exhibitions & milestones
A slow, stubborn line
- 2016First studio, a converted box room in Birgu.
- 2019Debut group exhibition, Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta.
- 2021Began making archival prints so the work could travel further.
- 2023Solo show — “Limestone Light”, Malta Society of Arts.
- 2025Salt & Citrus released; commissions open twice a year.
What matters here
Studio values
Made slowly
Fewer works, more attention. Nothing is rushed to fill a shelf.
Archival by default
Cotton rag papers, pigment inks and linen that will outlast all of us.
Honest colour
Photographs are corrected against the original, never flattered.
Small batch
Editions stay small and are retired when they sell out.
Work together
Commission something personal
A place, a person, a memory or a wall that needs exactly the right colour. Commissions open a few times a year with a small number of places each season.
Studio notes
New work, exhibition news and the occasional half-finished painting.
Prefer to write? Get in touch.