Frank Briffa has been painting full time since retiring from his lecturing post in 1998.
He works mainly with oil on canvas and for some time now his paintings have had strong links with music. Links between music and the visual arts already exist – there is a shared vocabulary such as composition, colour, tonality, rhythm , texture, and chromaticism.
In making his paintings Frank is not primarily trying to illustrate anything but rather attempting to find a pictorial equivalent to the musical language. Since music, in its purest formis abstract, his paintings are abstract, although he has found that in recent work figurative elements do seem to find a way in.
The composers whose music Frank has based work on cover a very wide range, from Tallis and Byrd to twentieth and twenty-first century composers such as Berg, Schoenberg, Bartok, Stravinsky, Britten, Tippett and Birtwhistle.
The pieces of music on which he bases paintings on he has known over a long period and therefore has had time for them
to ingrain themselves into his subconscious, he does not need to play the music while he paints.
Frank doesn’t think it’s necessary for viewers of his work to know the music on which it is based – he hopes the paintings can stand for themselves, but he does say, “ If they produce a curiosity that stimulates the viewer to find out more about the music then I don’t think that is a bad thing”.
“The greatest (conscious) influence on my work is not a painter but the American composer Charles Ives
(1874-1954)”.
He works mainly with oil on canvas and for some time now his paintings have had strong links with music. Links between music and the visual arts already exist – there is a shared vocabulary such as composition, colour, tonality, rhythm , texture, and chromaticism.
In making his paintings Frank is not primarily trying to illustrate anything but rather attempting to find a pictorial equivalent to the musical language. Since music, in its purest formis abstract, his paintings are abstract, although he has found that in recent work figurative elements do seem to find a way in.
The composers whose music Frank has based work on cover a very wide range, from Tallis and Byrd to twentieth and twenty-first century composers such as Berg, Schoenberg, Bartok, Stravinsky, Britten, Tippett and Birtwhistle.
The pieces of music on which he bases paintings on he has known over a long period and therefore has had time for them
to ingrain themselves into his subconscious, he does not need to play the music while he paints.
Frank doesn’t think it’s necessary for viewers of his work to know the music on which it is based – he hopes the paintings can stand for themselves, but he does say, “ If they produce a curiosity that stimulates the viewer to find out more about the music then I don’t think that is a bad thing”.
“The greatest (conscious) influence on my work is not a painter but the American composer Charles Ives
(1874-1954)”.