The Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce is hosting an art exhibition by Jessica DeBattista. The four spacious halls are the setting for Jessica’s 6^th personal exhibition, with works executed these last eight years.

One hall is dedicated to her collection of painted sculptures in Perspex. These works painstakingly executed on various thicknesses of Perspex sheets and painted in acrylics, evoke an ethereal effect. Religiously inspired in their majority, and imbued with symbolism which harks to the Middle Ages, these works uplift the spirit and lull the senses into a feeling of tranquility.

In contrast to the cool blues and mauves in the aforementioned works, the chromatic power of her portraits, which congregate in another room, jolts one out of this serenity and flings him back into a world of man. Pastels predominate in this section, a medium that Jessica has a penchant for when it comes to executing a portrait.

The two other halls in Palazzo De La Salle are reserved for her Nude Figure paintings. Jessica has always felt motivated by the figure to the extent that we rarely see works where it does not feature. But whereas before, we tend to see the figure placed in a dramatic setting, here we see her making use of the nude figure to be admired for its own sake. Her sense of colour comes to the fore in the sensitive use of varied palettes ranging from the quasi-monochrome to the subtle nuances of a limited palette and on to the powerful contrast of complementary colours juxtaposed in such a way as to create a disturbing effect.

Jessica has further enriched this exhibition by showing another facet of her artistic interests as she is promoting her novel ‘Out of the shadows’ in this venue.