About

Part of the passion I feel for painting is a state of mind, a place of complete surrender like a dream, perhaps… The creative process is like a vulcano, stewing a set of feelings and emotions into canvas or paper or any other support. Painting is a tremendous way to communicate and express the most profound emotions.

My work is an exercise of permanent experimentalism.

I love to explore geometric compositions with lines, light and shadow exercises, finding a rhythm I guess …

I really appreciate arranging compositions with different elements. As soon the composition has an interesting visual balance and objects achieved a kind of unity together, I start drawing the composition and later I start painting it. Sometimes things don’t go as planned because my perception changes as time as the work evolves but that dynamic is the most interesting thing in the process… exploring the light and shadow, forms, textures, the color reflecting in the space around… is it really reflecting there or is just my imagination… ?

What moves me ?

I love people ! I have strong hope in Humanity despite the black holes in it’s existence that might swallow our souls, hope and expectations…

There are things that evoke on me a strong emotional response. Painting is a tremendous way to exorcize profound emotions.

“femicide at home !” acrylic paint and Indian ink on cardboard is a work where I wrote down the names of women murdered by people with whom they had a family relationship – marriage, or a stable union, dating but also ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends and ex-partners.

The crime of femicide has an huge impact in victim’s families, friends and the community. Violence against women and girls as a manifestation of unequal power between men and woman let to domination and discrimination of women, depriving them of their full realization as a human being. From 2004 to 2019 in Portugal 521 women were murdered and 536 attempted murders were recorded !

“the wolf and the lamb” acrylic paint on canvas is a very profound reflection about the systemic child sex abuse by many Roman Catholic priests all over the world.

“resilience” acrylic paint on canvas is about climate change ! It is consensual that climate change has a human origin – anthropocene – we are the cause and simultaneously the spectators of these changes. This is also a very pertinent topic to which I have dedicated time – drawing and painting – to dispel my fears about the possible extinction of life on Earth. In this artwork I chose cacti as a symbol of resistance, adaptation and survival.

“green cities” acrylic paint over paper is about the naivety and romanticism of “green solutions” when we are confronted with the active wars of this century: Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Sudan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Syria and Yemen, so much destruction, so many lives lost and huge waste of resources, misfortunes that can ruin our life on Earth without having a real opportunity to design an effective plan against climate changes…

The emissions of greenhouse gases caused by the war in Ukraine increased by 31% in 12 months and in 3 years of war has exceeded 200 million tons of carbon dioxide. Think about other conflicts and do the math …

.. and I must say that I am an optimistic kind of person !

“the dark side of AI” acrylic on canvas, is about an embryonic phase with infinite promises, AI is a magical moment in the history of humanity. For now, machines are not walking next to us, they do not gesture. But they are already present everywhere, they influence and flood! Answering our questions, even unexpressed doubts. They are surprisingly non-human, strange, wonderful and frightening embryos, with no genetically determined future. Despite the benefits, we feel fears and anxiety ? We fear the dark side of AI but we cannot “un-invent” it. The attraction to the phenomenon is so big, the amazement with creation is such, that if an “human abduction” happens it will be with consent !

More about me…

I’m a visual artist. I work with a variety of media, mostly painting but also illustration, digital art and photography.

I worked 10 years in advertising and I received an award for creativity and excellence.

I left advertising in 2000 to learn Italian painting techniques: Fresco, Trompe L’ Oeil, gilding …

Later I studied Surrealism with the Professor and Painter Eurico Gonçalves, who influenced me incredibly and changed the way I think about art ! Even today his suggestions came to mind when I think about a new project. Bellow you can see a picture of us, the team together during a break from work ! Great times !

In the following years I studied scientific illustration in FCUL, drawing in Ar.Co, digital art and painting at SNBA

In 2005 C M Oeiras lend me a studio to develop my projects and during 5 years I shared a spacious atelier with another two visuals artists and together we’ve created synergies and we had a creative and productive work. Apart from business we developed free artistic workshops for children and teenagers from humble families, it was a time of strengthening ties with the local community. Art has always an aggregating nature and results were beyond expectations !

In 2011 I left Oeiras and moved to Belas, near Sintra where I still have a small studio. I had my first solo exhibition at Lamego museum with a set of works inspired by Portuguese folk art. I taught arts at EB Oeiras and Carcavelos and I developed during several years painting workshops on a voluntary basis with woman suffering from mental illness. I do not share the experience of volunteering to reveal an altruistic side but simply to affirm that the cultural atmosphere in which we immerse ourselves shapes the person we become.

We are living in such controversial times, so many doubts emerging and many questions to be answered that I believe that a great cultural transition is about to happen, with new cultural movements and new shapes !

Embracing something bigger than us: a connection that extends beyond our individual needs and desires !