The Malta series resonate with associative memories derived from visits to this Mediterranean limestone outcrop in the late 1990s. The paintings emerged from a collision between memory and long term concerns with a particular approach to the process of picture making that combines vivid colour with a speculative exploration of shape and gesture. They appear to allude to objects and places but without resolving clearly into representation. At the same time they constantly refer attention back to the surface itself, reasserting the primacy of the painting's world, before any other, and reminding the viewer to examine the paintings as objects in their own right.

The titles rely on the alien shapes and sounds of Maltese names, using strangeness to make an attempt on the layered, evocative effect of poetry. They combine reference to ancient history, a battle of languages, traces of successive waves of invasion and the marking process of place.