Almost always the surface that i’ll work on is white. Sometimes I moisten it so that the colours that will lay upon it slide better and blend with it. I always want to hide it, to cover it with another colour, but occasionally it comes back and where I once saw colour, I now can only see white. White is where I start and where I sometimes finish. Start over. … [Read more...]

The landscape empties but remains full in its own space. In its immensity time has also stopped. Being inside the landscape is like having existed for a very long time, as nooteboom tells us. The room’s pavement is dark and waxed. The edges of each floorboard define parallel lines. It’s dark in here. I can’t see properly anymore. The gaze scarcely focuses the furniture in this … [Read more...]

The small zinc cups were aligned on the kitchen table and my mother showed me how to grease them. I’d dip my fingers in the fat and then slide slowly along the surface of the cup. I’ve never forgotten those smells and the tactile sensations that are involved in the making of “food things”. Today i’m preparing again these little cups that will make pies, in this case, vegetable … [Read more...]

The arches of St. Marks’ square paraded under my gaze before my rushed step. It was almost closing time at museu correr and a large selection of francis bacon’s paintings awaited me, in that impressive show in the year of his death. Impressive will always be a relative appreciation. It was so for myself, also because it was the first time i was seeing in person a great number … [Read more...]

As the afternoon ends and the evening approaches, the shadows and everything else that helps the inaccuracy of the gaze allow another breath of life, propose resuming the dream of a blue sky or a green landscape, of a simple life, of smooth and carefree talks. However, there was a day in which the memory of that midday did not faint, it remained there, reminding him of the … [Read more...]

I had accelerated my pedal. Gliding in the wind, my head started to empty in the rhythmical pace of the pedalling, in the keeping of my balance and in the sight of the horizon. The tide had still not emptied completely. The clouds became more present and strong. I even felt that I was lifting from the ground. Below me - the dam, the lagoon, sheep, birds - became more distant … [Read more...]

The space was small, and shortly after, the available floor was completely invaded by the successive sheets of paper that I had watercolored. Then I stopped, waiting for the “low tide” in that sea of wet paper. Later I’d gather the dry colours, altered by secret alchemy of evaporation. … [Read more...]

What is proposed is more than seeing inside, it is to imagine oneself being inside, as if confined within a surrounding environment of intense painting, isolated and cut off from all conditions exterior to painting itself. … [Read more...]

Seated at the end of the castle wall, once again gazing over Lisbon. I draw: the hand moves in circles. someone arises from my back to observe what i’m doing. I finish in that moment, I fold the drawing’s sheet. My gaze wants to be alone with itself. … [Read more...]

There are moments; I don’t even need to close my eyes. Moments in which an aroma reminds me of a house, a corner of a living room, a side of a table, the roundness of a bowl, the wrinkling of a bed. I don’t know if I’m able to do the inverse path: lay a colour in a painting and when looking at it, thinking of smells that come or have resulted of sensations of joy or sadness, … [Read more...]

One day the gaze recalls the day before. when the hand gently fondles the door’s post, the tabletop, the edge of the bed. Thinking about other doors, tables, bedrooms, houses, the gaze roams, searching for other moments. The repetition of the gesture certifies the continuous gaze. … [Read more...]

An interior is drawn, the interior of a palace, of a house, walls - some made of ice, others not, a cave, a path in a canyon, an exploding window, staircases that draw back and come forward, that sink or elevate, something that falls in the water, a row of columns, a suitcase that opens. … [Read more...]

The atlantic close to me is the sound of the waves. That constant thundering, soft or loud, in its minimal repetition, lullabies me until I loose awareness of myself. The gaze that has seen far away, that has observed the unreachable horizon, is now close by, rolled into continuously blurred waves, savoring the repeated lines of the surf foam. … [Read more...]