I start by choosing all the colours that the paint manufacturers provide. I lay the respective pots of paint out on my work table, grouping them together according to a possible palette of colours: I establish a scale among the colours that I intend to use first and their opposite colours, not in the optical sense or as a chromatic circle, but by subjective, intuitive … [Read more...]

Sometimes there is a non-path, a “wrongness” that I realize during the making of a painting, or even in the moment that I considered it finished. These colours or drawings, that I can’t explain, freely incorporate in the surface of the painting, Appropriating of my space. … [Read more...]

As I think about the cities of my life, I conclude that i’ve either not travelled a lot or that I am a terrible conservative, as I feel intimately connected to my city, Lisboa. I live in Lisboa, in the Graça neighborhood. I’ve always lived there; I was born in the same house that I live in. My studio is close by to my house, and for the majority of times I won’t use transport … [Read more...]

I don’t recall when this box of watercolours was given to me. I know that it travels with me since forever. I open it from time to time just to see the small ink blocks wore down by vigorous brush rubbing. I also don’t have the first proofs of its usage – I imagine sheets of paper with an immense mix of drained overlapped colours, because that was what I enjoyed doing, or … [Read more...]

I like to fill my paintings with paint: lots of paint, thick paints. Mixed different colours flowing on the surface of the canvas. Seeking the surprise of a contrast, the intensity of an unexpected rapport on colours side by side. My shoes get painted too. Some flocks of paint fall over them during the studio work. It is as if I am making two paintings at the same time: one … [Read more...]

With my arms stretched open, the blades that I am holding firmly in my hands touch the two surfaces simultaneously. When one hand scores the paint on one surface, the other hand immediately imitates the gesture on the opposite side. i start again. now it is the right hand which takes up the initiative and the left that responds. in this way the drawing begins to emerge. … [Read more...]