When quite young Catherine Cavallo was mesmerized and spellbound by the language in observing faces and human gestures. Actually she loves solitude. Her greatest satisfaction is expressing herself in paint in the quiet solitude of her studio.

In a recent interview (Jan. 1995) Catherine told me that she would rather capture a tranquil and serene atmosphere. She would like to find the peace within through painting. An astounding change in her dialectic when before she attained fire and brimstone. Strangely enough her placid landscape notwithstandingly achieve her initial powerful dynamic energy, tremendous tension in action and colour and psychic force. Catherine was born in April 1963 to Victor and Miriam nee Zammit Gauc. Her great grandfather was Italian-bred in the Campagna region. She was born and brought up in Victoria Avenue, Sliema presently Bor Olivier Street. She attended the Sacred Heart School, Sliema and St Edwards College, Cottonera.

In 1981/2 she left the Island to attend a four-year diploma course in the Fine Arts City and Guilds of London Art School. In 1986 she won a UNESCO fellowship in textile conservation. After a year her subsidy was withdrawn. A fortunate circumstance because there is hardly any satisfaction for an artist in restoration; there is no compatibility between conservation and creativity.

After living in England for eight years Catherine established herself in Tuscany, Italy where in December 1994 she organised an exhibition of her paintings in Siena. She organised other personal exhibitions in Malta; in April 1986 and November 1990.

Her expressionism is bold, defined, sincere, honest and modern. According to the artist an honest and sincere artistic expression should never hide or fear anything. Her audacity and courage in confronting artistic problems and experiments are perhaps the elements I admire most in the artist; an audacity that at times even mature artists fail to achieve or attain faced by exaggerated caution or serious studies, planning and preparation. Man and his tragic destiny dominates her work: his suffering, pain, torment and sadness. A study in pathology.

Human suffering is brought out definitively in physiognomy, movement, gestures and moods. Black dominates and predominates chromatic colours. And the uses of related large spaces and masses (larghezza) create a dialectic where distortion, contortion and exaggeration or elongation of the figure intimate the grotesque, an integral part of Expressionism together with decadence. Lately Catherine has mitigated or softened such an approach. The sub has filtered through the ominous clouds and the Spring thaw melting the ice uncovered roses growing among the thorns. Without doubt the greatest works by Catherine are those depicting the Crucifixion and Deposition of Christ. At 32 with rare artist talent, she is probbably the boldest female artist on the Island.

In a diptych of 1983/4 Catherine presents us with tremendous force and violence an agitated mob milling under the image of a crucified Christ. While a band holds high a mallet in a threatening gesture another tries to pull it back. Still another hand pulls out a nail from Christs foot while the crowd pushes, pulls, hems and heaves.t terror, fear and madness! The realism becomes a nightmare.

Is it true that man losing the peace within in moments of great folly and confusion crucifies Infinite Love without hesitation, without scruple, with malice? In uncontrolled wrath he stampedes and in a senseless frenzy, with an acute thirst for innocent bold, sacrifies truth. His dichotomy of dive and hawk sparks a fit of uncontrollable madness. Undecided and unstable man wrestles in war to attain peace!

The tremendous force that emanates from this work contrasts with the warm French atmosphere of Catherines recent Tuscan landscapes and Venetian masks. The pulsating quality in Vincent van Gogh is suggested in her fields carpeted with golden sunflowers. In 1986 I asked Catherine why she had such a tremendous obsession for the grand epic/religious theme: the Crucifixion of Christ. She simply answered: I want to praise God. Perhaps one might ask how is it possible to praise God in depicting his suffering, his agony. Why not? Is there or live for humanity? The victim is transformed into a hero in the agony of selfless dedication, of death, in his resurrection. Suffering is metamorphosed into the triumph of vistory: life over death.

There are those who think even for one moment that God is a cruel tyrant expecially in a cataclysmic catastrophe or universal tragedy. Perhaps mans existential pain is nothing other than the cosmic embrace of God. Gods infinite love does not allow our complete emargination and isolation and as a tangble sign that we exist, that there is someone who loves us unconditionally he embraces us with so much concern that we hurt. Thus our existence heightened and intense changes into a wonderful explorative journey of great significance.

God becomes a defining light, an embracing sun. He becomes every breath we take. The rising and setting sun. The universe. His eyes are the twinkling stars studded in a dark night sky, his hair the Milky Way. His lips are the ocean waters that kiss and lap the continental shores. He is light and darkness, life and death, womb and tomb, birth, death and resurrection. To approach Catherines art one needs a spiritual vision.