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My essentials PIETRU FARRUGIA 39, psychotherapist and exhibiting artist I am a psychotherapist and an artist working mainly in drawing. I am interested in dreams, memory, old stones, faces, weather, and the strange little objects people keep around them. My drawings are often records of night-time. Dreams, almost-dreams, and the things that arrive when ordinary explanations have gone quiet. I am drawn to work that feels direct, private, and not too polished, work that keeps something back. My therapeutic work and my drawings both depend on attention to what is half-said, partly hidden, or easily missed 1. ONLINE STORY 2.TV 3.TV 4. Music 5. Place I listen to various things, but Dead Can Dance are a familiar presence. I like the voices, drones, percussion, and the sense of age in the sound. Their music has space and weight without becom- ing heavy-handed. It suits working late, especially when something is unclear. WALES is the place I most want to return to, especially North Wales. I am drawn to St Winefride's Well in Holy- well, and to wells, springs, Roman baths, and other places where water, stone and ordinary use have gath- ered over time. I like sites that still feel active rather than neatly explained. Plac- es people have visited for healing, ritual, habit, curi- osity, or no very clear rea- son at all, and that's close to what I look for in drawings too. Not spectacle, but a re- cord of what remains. A recent story that stayed with me was about rewil- ding through ponds. Not wolves, bears, or enormous landscapes, but ponds. Small, muddy places where life begins to return. I liked the scale of it. Restoration, in that version, is less a grand gesture than a matter of making room for frogs. That feels close to drawing. A contained space where something may slowly reap- pear THE last film I saw at the cin- ema was Project Hail Mary, though the dark room and popcorn were also a large part of the appeal. I like going to the cinema because it asks you to sit still and look. That is not so far from therapy, or from drawing. You give some- thing your attention and then see what remains afterwards, and often the frame does as much work as the plot. ONLINE, I often return to Darren Spratt's WC21 Pro- ductions. He makes films about old British places. Lanes, ruins, churches, bridg- es, earthworks, and over- looked corners of the map. I like the patience of them. They are curious, muddy, and not over-produced. It is antiquarian YouTube in the best sense. Someone stop- ping to look where most peo- ple would keep walking. Compiled by Laura Calleja suggestions by email lcalleja@mediatoday.com 4 5 1 MaltaToday is supported by Arts Council Malta 4 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 12 JULY 2026 ALMANAC 3 2