Ed Dingli is a visual artist working across painting, illustration, graphic design, printmaking, and large-scale murals, with a practice rooted in community and collaboration. Originally from the island of Malta, Ed moved to the UK to study graphic communication at the University for the Creative Arts, where he culminated his studies with a thesis on social responsibility and ethics, which went on to shape his path over the next few years. He worked as a senior designer at London-based ethical studio Nice and Serious, before moving to Portugal with the aim of spending more time in nature and developing his practice as an independent artist. Ed now works from his studio in Lisbon, with a style that is in constant development as he seeks to create work that is empathetic, conscientious, and playful.

What moment or realization made you take your work seriously as an artist?
Over time I’ve understood that my work is not something separate from my life; it’s the thread connecting everything - the art of living. As an artist in any form, you develop a ‘sixth sense’, that of always being on the lookout for inspiration, be it from a small interaction with a stranger, an observation while out on a walk, a hand-written receipt from a fruit vendor, the neat typography on apartment door-bells. Rick Rubin says “We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output. The artist’s real work is a way of being in the world.” It’s the way we move through life, it exists in everyday gestures, interactions, decisions. And then there’s also a reminder to myself to not take everything too seriously - creativity becomes less about producing “art objects” and more about cultivating awareness and presence in everyday life.

Your visuals carry a strong identity. How do you keep your work evolving without losing that signature?
This is an interesting one. When I first started out as an illustrator, I was obsessed with the question of ‘what’s my style’. Eventually I realised that this is not something you choose, it’s something that develops over time, and hopefully keeps on evolving as I keep reinventing myself. What interests me more is the underlying language of the work.That language is shaped by certain values and ongoing questions: how we relate to the realities that we move through every day. The visuals become a way of reflecting and processing my own experience of the world. As I change, the work changes too. New conversations, environments, collaborations and experiences are reflected in the way I see and respond to things.

How do you decide when an idea is worth turning into a finished piece?
Like any other creative person, there are hundreds of fleeting ideas that pass through my mind on a regular basis - little observations, phrases, images or feelings. Some get quickly written on a scrap piece of paper or in my sketchbook, or typed into the notes app on my phone while out on a walk. Most of them never end up seeing the light of day.

Whether they end up turning into a finished piece is more about timing. Sometimes an idea gets left sitting on the shelf while I’m preoccupied with other projects. Other times, I feel an urgency to follow it before the feeling disappears. I’m trying to get better at trusting those moments and allowing myself to fully run with an idea while it still feels alive, before it becomes overthought or lost entirely.

Usually the ideas worth pursuing are the ones that continue to return to me emotionally. They linger in the background and slowly gather meaning over time. Often they emerge in response to something I’ve seen, heard or experienced, and creating the work becomes a way of processing or translating that feeling into something tangible. There’s a kind of catharsis in that - a release, a processing, an attempt to understand something more deeply through the act of creating.

What role does intuition play in your work versus planning or structure?
When I first moved more seriously into painting and expressive work, I almost felt the need to unlearn some of the principles of my graphic design training. I wanted to let go of overthinking and allow space for play, spontaneity and emotion to lead the process instead. Over time though, I realised that my design background wasn’t something I needed to escape from, but something that could strengthen the work. Structure can actually be incredibly freeing. Now I think of the process as a balance between the two. I often begin with a loose framework or intention, but I try not to become too rigid or attached to the original idea. Some of the most meaningful moments happen when the work starts resisting the plan and asks to become something else. I’ve learned that the challenge is not choosing between intuition and structure, but allowing them to coexist, giving myself enough grounding to hold the work together, while still leaving room for surprise, emotion and play.

How do you want people to feel or react when they encounter your work for the first time?
I guess I hope to create a moment of pause and reflection. I want the work to feel relatable in some way - that there’s something within it that people can connect to through their own lives or experiences. Maybe it reflects a thought or feeling they’ve had themselves, maybe it’s something humorous or quietly familiar, or maybe it’s simply an ordinary everyday scene that causes them to look at similar moments differently the next time they encounter them. I think there’s something powerful in making space for those quieter moments and allowing people to recognise themselves within them. If the work lingers with someone afterwards, even subtly, then I feel it has done something meaningful.

Have collaborations or conversations with others shaped your perspective as an artist? In what way?
Absolutely. I love collaborating with people from different backgrounds and disciplines because everyone approaches the world in completely different ways. I think those experiences have made me realise just how differently we all move through life. Every person carries their own ways of seeing and understanding the world, and I find that fascinating. Even the most ordinary conversation can completely shift the way you think about something.
I genuinely love talking to people: older people, children, people from completely different backgrounds to my own. I think there’s so much wisdom and insight to be found outside of our own circles and echo chambers. Most of the flow that you will have while making art will come from all the things that you do when you are not making art.

In a fast-moving visual culture, how do you stay authentic and avoid repetition?
I try to stay authentic to my own voice, my own thoughts and expressions, related to my daily experiences and my own values. One of the books I keep going back to is Scott Peck’s ‘The Road Less Travelled’. In it, he says ‘Only a relative and fortunate few continue until the moment of death exploring the mystery of reality, ever enlarging and refining and redefining their understanding of the world and what is true.’ As the world becomes ever-increasingly fast-moving, I try to slow down, to rush slowly - always refining and redefining the way I understand the world, absorbing and then expressing my own lessons as best as I can.

If your work could exist beyond images into another medium or form what would it become and why?
I think if my work were to move beyond images, it would naturally gravitate towards anthropology or ethnographic forms of storytelling. I’m deeply interested in the ways people construct meaning through rituals, memories, language. What draws me to anthropology is its attentiveness - the act of spending time with people, listening carefully, and understanding culture through lived experience. I think that approach resonates strongly with the way I make work. In another form, I could imagine the work becoming more research-based or participatory. What interests me most is the idea of creating work that documents not only how people live, but how they feel, remember and relate to one another. In that sense, art and anthropology feel closely connected to me: both are ways of observing the world carefully and trying to understand our place within it.

Interview by Sleiman Dayaa