Zepp Cassar is an internationally acclaimed abstract figurative and landscape painter who spends most of his time working between Sydney, France, Vietnam and Malta.
Definition: As an auto didactic artist, Zepp strives to explore and experiment with various mediums and beats his own drum with works that show us the many different techniques which other outsider artists have in common such as the refusal of references, methods and lessons. The universe which we all secretly hold, cross and intersect, at times, with the edges of fantasy.
Zepp arrived in Australia 21 years ago from Malta; (a small island 93Km south of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea. Art in his original homeland has descended from the first settlers, the Phoenicians. His earliest influence was learnt from the textured and sculptured repetitive patterns of their Temple of Fertility.
Childhood memories are crowded with sensual village fiestas, forever featuring loud bands, banners and flags of many rich colours, multi coloured confetti and freshly painted facades. As a result, a love of vibrant colours developed. His secondary education lead him to four years of studying colour, design, and print where he could indulge his imagination.
Zepp was fearful coming to Australia, attempting to penetrate a different language, new culture, and a unique flora and fauna within a vast unimaginable space.
His impressions of the bright and vibrant colour in Sydney have been interpreted as if by a third eye, distanced by his earlier experience, and independent of local trends and schools. This has been a help in Zepp’s art practise instructing pupils with special needs because they paint details away from the mainstream paintings and drawing as they are ‘outsiders’. Zepp is able to react freshly and spontaneously to local form, colour, light, shape, and texture that gives birth to free flow artworks. At times he reports what is happening around us, through the use of recyclable matter, and using inspirations found in institutions, parks, our homes and neighborhood. He is enthused by an intrinsic, internal, drive to paint from his feelings. He can’t be stopped – his fingers itch to create artworks. He is a true Auto didactic painter.
He had a group show in Nov 2005 and his first solo exhibition in Mar 06 at James Harvey Galleries Sydney. It was a very successful show. In 2008, he had another solo Sydney art show at Sara Roney Gallery. In September 2009, he had a solo exhibition in Paris sponsored by the Maltese Embassy in France. In October 2009, he had a show at Musée de la Création Franche Begles in France where they included three of his works in their international collection of Outsider Artists. In May 2010, Zepp Cassar has his first solo show at St James Caviller Art Museum in Valletta Malta sponsored by the Australian government.