Artist Vicki paints vivid pictures in her memoir

Lifestyle  – Judy Murphy meets the acclaimed artist Vicki Crowley whose colourful early life is chronicled in a new book

When Victoria Xuereb’s answer to a difficult maths question at her boarding school in England didn’t please her irascible teacher, his riposte was to tell her to “marry young”.

The vividly drawn scene is one of the hilarious moments in Vicki’s new memoir, Beyond the Ghibli, which will be launched this Friday at Kenny’s Bookshop in the city’s Liosbaun Retail Park.

Coincidentally, Maltese-born Vicki did marry young, at the age of 20 to Galway engineer Don Crowley, whom she met in Libya, where her family lived and where he was working.

But their marriage was for love and not a reflection of Vicki’s mathematical skills. Those were just fine, which she proved by qualifying as an architectural draughtsman after finishing school, a job that required mathematical precision and numerical skills. Her peripatetic childhood, meanwhile, meant she could speak five languages fluently and had a good grasp of several others, including Arabic.

When Vicki met Don, at the age of 18, they knew they were meant to be together and married two years later, in February 1960.

For the following 10 years, they moved between Malta, Gibraltar, Sierra Leone and Cameroon, as Don’s work dictated.

Finally, in 1970, they settled in Galway with their young family. Vicki has since built a career as a successful artist, working mostly from her studio at the family home in Barna.

This memoir, Beyond the Ghibli, is an account of her life until then, and it’s fascinating

A natural storyteller, Vicki gives a unique take on landmark events such as World War II and post-colonial Africa, while also having an eye for the intimacy of family life. The book’s title comes from an African sandstorm, or Ghibli, that was blowing when she and Don first set eyes on each other.

Born in Malta in 1940, to May (nee Brennan) and George Xuereb, Vicki entered a world at war. Malta, which was part of the British Empire, bore the brunt of German bombing in World War II and her name reflected her parents’ hope of a British victory. She has a vivid recall of those years of danger and food shortage. But it was also a time when unbreakable bonds were forged between family and friends.

Vicki’s father was in India with the British Army, when she was born – she was five and her older brother Jo was seven before he returned.

George Xuereb and his brothers ran a successful business, importing and exporting goods between Malta, Italy Greece and North Africa. He rejoined the business after the war, moving to Eritrea in East Africa – May, Vicki and Jo followed later, travelling by boat through a series of exotic ports.

Their years in Eritrea were idyllic – until Jo and Vicki were sent back to Malta to boarding school.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.