For Denis Calleja the wheel of fire has turned full circle. The stress, strain and tension in various jobs and tasks undertaken has matured and intensified his creative potential, and he has adopted a graphic technique to express his inner feelings and emotions. Sensitive kind and generous, he works with enthusiasm and achieves a delicate, fragile but refined idiom. Denis has a natural inclination for pen sketching and drawing. His impulsive spontaneous approach, coupled with improvisation, endows his work with the freshness of gestural or action painting. Such freedom adds excitement to his abstract expressionist approach. Yet his work is to a certain extent, primitive or naïve. Essentially it is a graphical expression that borders on embroidery with an exotic decorative abstract quality laced with glitter. In occasions Denis limits himself to a choice of silver and gold glitter. But he does not exclude the use of red, green and blue. Glitter produces a rich and precious quality while adding a popular appeal with its gaudy seduction. What are the merits of his work? Could it be termed creative or original? Since it is gestural, improvised, spontaneous and automatic it emanates a certain undeniable freshness. Denis is really self-taught, and therefore is not conditioned by academic exercises as practiced in an art class. His influence is remote, primitive, intuitive and instinctive. Perhaps one feels that the conscious, prevalent tradition or taste and modern expression do not contribute to his dialectic. Excerpt from The Air Malta Magazine Malta this Month