During the days that preceded the unit 2 assessment delivery date I tried to accomplish a series of resolved and finished paintings. By then, my work was mainly experimental, I felt there was this gap in my practice that I needed to fulfill, and with that in mind I painted a group of acrylic individualized canvas, following similar technical and conceptual principles I was using within my paper paintings.
In the end, however, I wasn't happy with this series of works, at least not as much as my paper grid ones. I believe the main reason for this was centered on the fact that I was trying to replicate exactly the same principles I was following while developing my paper compositions. These are, however, two totally different supports, and in the end, that counts tremendously in the final result of the painting itself. I didn't obtain the looseness and the immediacy of the watery paint I was using with paper. On canvas, that feeling was gone. There was tension, struggle, and a sense of unaccomplishment.
But even if the results were not as positive as I intended, unit 2 was over and I had to proceed. The Copeland Gallery Show was the next step and I needed to choose a work that better suited my practice by then.
Regarding the choice of work for the show, and since I was not fully satisfied with my canvas paintings, I decided the best procedure would be to focus on my grid works. One aspect I've been debating myself regarding those was on how to display them. It was like a puzzle to me and I needed to understand how to solve it, if there was any way to solve it. With that in mind, I looked into artworks that might be helpful. David Hockney’s multiple polaroid compositions was one example I found. These are associated with earlier research I did regarding this artist's interesting way of looking into space and perspective since, in his own words, he had many “objections to fixed-point perspective, the Renaissance kind, is that it pins you down. If the vanishing point is fixed, you are too. Your eyes, your gaze, can’t move freely.(...) he needs to move freely, visually, through space”. (Hockney; Gayford, 2021, p.151) I also looked back into Anthony Green’s distorted perspectives, or even Raymond Pettibon’s fascinating work installation such as the ones in Regen Projects, Los Angeles, 2000, and David Zwirner, London, 2017.
The idea of mapping was also another topic that by then I was researching, particularly on how I could incorporate this concept into my practice. While reading the book On the Map', by Simon Garfield, in which the author writes about the multiple layers of approaches and meanings of maps throughout history, I retained these words.
“Every map tells a story. The picturesque antique ones speak of quest and conquest, of discovery, claim and glory, not to mention the horror tales about exploitation of native populations.” (Garfield, 2013, p.13)
The idea of maps telling stories sustained some ideas I wanted to explore with the grid works. There are, however, many ways to tell stories through maps. In unit 2 I mentioned Charles Booth's maps and how they were one good example of what social cartography is. Another example is Dr. John Snow’s map used to “illustrate the infectious spread of cholera” (Garfield, 2013. p. 223) during the year of 1853, in the city of London. I also came across imaginary and “ impossible maps such as Sir Thomas More's Utopia, or ones such as Nabokov’s map of the journey through Dublin of Stepen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom in Ulysses (...).” (Garfield, 2013, p.247
Another important element of maps are symbols. These can be used in many different ways, although we conventionally attribute their importance to this idea of informing the map reader on how and where to naviagte during his or her travel. They work as safeguard elements, particularly if one is going into unknown territory.
“The map is torn from a sketchbook and drawn in pencil, and uses classic renaissance techniques to mark coastlines, cliffs, craters and inlets - contouring, chiaroscuro and cross hatching that makes the land resemble the palm of a wizened hand. It really does look like a treasure map.” (Garfield, 2013, p.259)
I tried to incorporate most of these ideas on a composition of painted canvas tiles, made with the objective of being my Copeland Gallery show work, depicting a map of my London walking routines. I wanted to use the idea of symbols as a way to navigate the space I was building, being those crowds, lakes, trees, among others which I recovered from my sketchbook.
In the end, again, just like it happened previously with my canvas paintings trials, I was not happy with the final result. It felt as if the work itself was too obvious, the feelings of my journeys were not present. Even the lines didn’t exactly resemble my sketchbook drawings.
Regardless of this less positive conclusion, I still had to decide which work to take for the exhibition. I opted to go for what I felt was my strongest work, the paper series, and so I assembled a new grid composition. However, with the limited time I had, this ended up being a last minute resource.
I also added a new section to its lower part. This new section focused only on the lines of the figures and so I recicled earlier paintings by adding a white paint layer on top of them. This white layer of paint, however, had the particularity of not totally erasing the figures from the under layers. Some of those could still be seen, at least some glimpses of them, particularly if the viewer went closer to the work. This unintentional aspect of this work ended up being more important than I thought, but only later would I discover that. I’d say that one must never underestimate the power of last resource decisions and the so-called “happy accidents”.
After the end of the exhibition, even if I was not completely happy with this particular work and its display, I still believe it was a very important step in my MA route.
The days that followed this moment were of particular reflection. I kept thinking about how my work would get to that resolved aspect I was looking for. I couldn’t avoid feeling that I was stuck. I knew for sure I couldn’t keep painting while thinking not about the quality of the work but instead the quantity. It was, by then, doing more harm than good to my practice. I needed to slow down, to reflect, to see live painting, read and investigate on a deeper level how other artists whose work I related to could somehow inspire me and give me answers.
I revisited both Tate Britain and also the National Gallery, as well as galleries and spaces I had never been before such as the Barbican Center, Royal Academy, White Cube, among others. Many months have passed since I first arrived in London. All the influences and processes I’ve been dealing with during those previous intense MA months made me look and search for things I hadn't before. I didn’t feel I was a passive viewer anymore. I was filtering and choosing how and where to look.
I was particularly attracted to this idea of scale. Particularly in the National Gallery there are rooms where the paintings almost resemble murals given their size. I also kept trying to find depictions of crowds. I was drawn to artists such as Stanley Spencer, who painted Britain's village lifes in large scale works and whose interests, just as mine, “always comes directly out of his experience of life” (Rothenstein, 1962, p.3). I was also interested in the crowds depictions of old masters, as well as the modernists, being Manet’s Music in the Tuileries Gardens one great example of the compositions I was interested in.
While looking at these works, I was simultaneously drawing in my sketchbook the shapes of the figures and their disposition on the painting. I wanted to understand how these artists arranged these figures and how they integrated them in one space.
Another exhibition I visited, in this case in Barbican Center, during this research period, led me to an artist whose work I have admired for quite some time, Jean Dubuffet. Brutal Beauty is considered “the first major survey of his work in the UK for 50 years, showcasing four decades of his career, from early portraits and fantastical statues, to butterfly assemblages and giant colourful canvases. Dubuffet endlessly experimented and was clear on his purpose.” (https://sites.barbican.org.uk/dubuffetguide/?_ga=2.36418144.1533105230.1630276943-2059820822.1630165020).
A wonderful exhibition, focused not only on the strong experimental side of the artist, but also on his main interests such as Outsider art. There was one particular room which got my attention regarding its importance to my art practice, the Hourloupe room. .
""Hourloupe" is an invented word that echoes the French entourloupe (to play a kind of trick) as well as hurler (to roar), hululer (to hoot) and loup (a male wolf). Dubuffet liked the animal associations, describing his word as sounding like ‘some wonderland or grotesque object or creature’. He used it for a new cycle of works that he had begun quite by accident while doodling on the telephone in July 1962. Using a four-colour ballpoint pen, he had made a series of fluid shapes and figures, which he embellished with blue and red stripes before cutting them out and placing them against a black background. These initial drawings became the gateway to an all-consuming series of paintings, sculptures, environments and performances that would occupy him for more than 12 years”. (https://sites.barbican.org.uk/dubuffetguide/?_ga=2.36418144.1533105230.1630276943-2059820822.1630165020)
So Dubuffet ended up creating this pictorial language that he spreaded into different mediums. I also remember, a few years ago, while travelling to Paris, and visiting Pompidou Center in Paris, discovering his work Winter Gardens which consisted in a room entirely covered by painted lines and sculptural shapes, just like the ones in the Barbican Center exhibition. This idea of a space that immerses and challenges the viewer was immensely appealing to me and I could see that both in Pompidou and Barbican Center.
After this period of research, and with summer approaching, Camberwell College provided us with bigger studio spaces. It was the perfect timing to explore these ideas of scale and immersiveness I was so deeply looking into. I wanted to try those with my paper series and finish that particular chapter of my MA practice. I wanted to focus during the last MA weeks on my canvas works and finally try to achieve more resolved works.
I rearranged all my previous paper works, creating new compositions and using the new studio space. The process of scaling up and working with the phisical space using my paper compositions ended up being a very intuitive and somehow fast process. I believe it was a mix of my urge to end this section of my MA work and also the greater confidence I felt about these ideas and materials. In the end, I felt these were concluded processes, at least until I left Camberwell.
It was finally time to face my final challenge, the one I was struggling with for quite some time, and finally to be able to obtain resolved works on canvas. I needed to start with the basics and understand which parts of my previous works, which ideas were important to maintain, and which to abandon, and finally, if there were any others to add.
I was certain about the sketchbook usage and its importance as the tool where I gathered my raw material. Also, I would keep depicting my surroundings, focusing on the subway, parks and my room. Keeping these ideas as simple as I could was a first and important step.
I wasn't so sure about the technical aspects of the painting itself. I knew I wanted to use oil painting, and I also knew I couldn’t replicate and expect the same feelings as the acrylic I used previously in my paper works. When I did that, at the end of Unit 2, the results were not as positive as I expected.
While in this reflective mood, I had this rather informal conversation with Geraint Evans, my tutor and pathway leader, which ended up being very important to my unit 3 practice during the final summer weeks. Firstly, he told me I urgently needed to get high quality material, mainly brushes, canvas and paint in order to obtain better results and consequently closer responses to what I intended to depict. My rather impulsive nature in what concerns painting makes me forget these basic rules, focusing on the quantity of works I produce instead of the quality. I needed to contradict that.
A second aspect Geraint mentioned during our conversation concerned my work exhibited at Copeland Gallery. According to him, a detail of that work worked interestingly. Precisely the “happy accident” I mentioned earlier,the lower section of its composition, added as a last resource option, almost unintentionaly. The white paint layer was, according to Geraint, working really well by hiding the underlayer figures without totally erasing them, creating a mysterious atmosphere that I could replicate on canvas if that was my intention. To me, that made a click in my mind. These hidden layers were almost as if past frames, memories, sketches on top of each other. All those thoughts emerged and began to reorientate my intentions regarding my final paintings.
But I couldn’t only change the quality of my materials, I also needed to change my way of painting, my work methodology. I needed to be a “smarter” painter and avoid rushing, be more organized, to channel my desire to produce into quality works. Even the sketchbook used, the environments I was depicting, I needed to understand them more deeply. I no longer intended to obtain a merely visual reproduction and interpretation of my surroundings. Not only technically, but also conceptually I needed to understand how to represent what I wanted.
One fellow colleague of my MA course, who now I have the honour to consider being my friend, Koshiro Akiyama, (Aki) has always been an inspiration regarding his work ethic and methodology. Our conversations throughout the year have been tremendously pleasant, and even if sometimes our English can limit those same interactions, I learned a lot with him. Besides that, not only through words can human beings communicate and establish friendships. We both share the same love for painting so I believe in the end that was the most important link we could have between each other.
Aki’s mental and physical dedication to painting were impressive. He patiently applied thin layers of acrylic paint in his works. Some of these works took him weeks to complete. I believe part of the process was also for him to better understand and eventually master the choice of colours and its subtle effects. Not rushing in order to get on the next canvas, instead, cultivating emotions, feelings, atmospherical sensations using precisely these daily methodical rituals. I believe it was not as much a matter of being patient but instead a genuine care and love for painting.
I would never be able to replicate the same feelings and effects as Aki did in his paintings. We are different persons, different artists, we have different intentions and interests. However, I learned important lessons regarding his painting philosophy and methodology. I admire him as a man and as an artist, and above all, as a friend.
I was interest in this idea of atmosphere, of using paint, colour, transparency, brushstrokes intentionally, thoughtfully. I researched some of the impressionists, an example of a group of artist who shared and applied similar principles in their works.
“Instead of painting in a studio, the impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by working quickly, in front of their subjects, in the open air (en plein air) rather than in a studio. This resulted in a greater awareness of light and colour and the shifting pattern of the natural scene. Brushwork became rapid and broken into separate dabs in order to render the fleeting quality of light.” (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/i/impressionism)
While in London, exiled from war, having escaped from Paris, Charles-François Daubigny “Worked en plein air, focusing on the banks of the Thames, capturing their humid atmosphere (...)” (Leribault, 2018, p.58) while Pissaro “incorporated into his paintings the distinctive architectural elements of London, but also captured its unique atmosphere, its special, transitory quality of light, conveyed with lively brushstrokes''. (Leribault, 2018, p.59)
Besides the impressionists, I also looked into another series of artists, some of them being referenced to me during tutorials. Archibald Motley, known for his portraying the city of Chicago and its atmosphere, was one of them.
“When this painter laureate strolled on the stroll, whether as observer or participant, he was taking part in a moving theater” (Powell, 2014, p 49)
His paintings felt as if they were an extent of those surroundings. Back then, in the first decades of the century, music, particularly Jazz and Blues, was thriving in that part of America.
“Motley's multiplicity of compositional elements, their interpretation and reintroduction, in Bleus were not unlike the ''riffs” and ''stop-time” of musical relative Louis Armstrong”. (...) For Armstrong the format was established by the music basics melody and ever-present rhythm section, whereas for Motley, his visual departures moved across the scenes' anticipated intervals. The attenuated, but persistent changes in Motley’s Bleus have a counterpart in Armstrong’s musical virtuosity in that, for both artists, the issue at hand concerned feeling the beat rather than explicitly seeing or hearing it.” (Powell, 2014, p.120)
Besides Motley, I also came across Jacob Lawrence’s “ forthright but intense dramatic compositions, guileless obvious, yet often unexpectedly daring. (...) The complement rhythms of the simple narrative are interpreted by harshal angular gestures and explosive moments. (...) there is a strong feeling for space and the illusion of dephand movement are created by color juxtapositions, exaggerated perspectives and unusual angular visions”. (Brown, 1974, p.12) Among others, these were examples of artists whose interests and ways of painting were closer to my own intentions.
After this period of research and decision making I felt I was finally ready to proceed and start a new series of oil paintings. I decided I would use two different surfaces, cotton and linnes, as well different primers, such as rabbit glue skin and acrylic gesso. I would work daily on these works, trying to understand how the material, the paint layers, my new brushes, would react to my decisions and how they would technically affect my conceptual intentions. I started by depicting the subway crowds, they were the places I mostly sketched and felt more close to. Besides that, my subway sketches were by then numerous which would help in the decision making and range of choice.
They kept changing constantly. This practice became almost like a puzzle whose pieces were the lines, colour and composition.
This feeling reminded me of artists such as Cecily Brown and her approach to painting that can be described as a “swing precariously from improvisation to more conscious control, from abstraction to figuration”. (Prose, 2020, p.9) or Michal Armitage, whose paintings I could see live for the first time at the exhibition on the Royal Academy of Arts, whose usage of the line and colour also resembled this sense of tension and decision making I earlier mentioned.
As I was painting I understood I wanted to explore, among other aspects, this feeling of moving through crowds, to blend among them, among my paintings. Looking for something, trying to find a gesture, a face, just as it happens when we are looking for someone in a concert, or we notice a peculiar face in a public transport.
Through the painting process I understood that linen and rabbit glue skin reacted better to the appliance of thin layers of paint in comparison to cotton and acrylic primer. Linen was better suited for delicacy. I opted to allocate the compositions in which the line was more important to cotton and the ones in which the painting was more delicate to linen. In the first I intended to assume the gesture in the front plan, in the second to hide it under colour and thin layers of paint. It would be a different way to depict the atmosphere I earlier mentioned.
Besides this crowd series, I kept working simultaneously on the painted canvas tiles works I started earlier while trying to create a work to display on the Copeland Gallery show weeks before.
In order to try and fully understand how to add meaning and solve this part of my work, I needed to keep exploring the city of London by walking and sketching. I needed to deeply integrate myself in the life of this almost complex city. Slowly and repeatedly I would be able to reach a level of understanding that would eventually satisfy my needs. But for that, I needed to walk more, to draw and map “my” own place in the city.
“This is street life: disorientation, a jumble of snatched faces, and car noise. But then slowly the flow hardens into patterns. The jumble of faces becomes clear, then repetitive. Night after night, I begin to map the turns and circles the beggars make, like clockwork. Now I can mark a [X] where the working girls stand smoking on the hour at the beginning of Edgware Road. Now I can see the rhythm in the streets”. (Judah, 2016, p.12)
I found one particular book which became important to this set of ideas. Mapping it out an alternative atlas of contemporary art, edited by Hans-Ulrich Obrist. This book gathers map interpretations done by artists, writers, thinkers among others, resulting in a series of work displays that made me realize how diversified meanings can have such an object. Particularly to city maps, I found important the words of Oscar Kokoschka when he said that “(..) it is very difficult to make a synthetic image of a city, because by the moment one has seized it it has changed”. (Obrist, 2014, p.234)
There is change flow among London, different areas impose different feelings. Parks, for example, allow the Londoners to “rise above the smoke. to feel a refreshing air for a little time and to see the sun setting in coloured glory (...) open fields on sanitary grounds as “air holes for laborers” and urged those of an artistic bent to fight whenever “remnants of rustic beauty were left”. (Elborough, 2017, p.184)
Areas such as Pecnkham or Woodgreen are totally different from Muswell Hill or Notting Hill. To understand such an intricate and complex place one must assume the never reachable answer as being the best possible resolution. And with that in mind, my canvas tiles became an image of that idea. Just like the crowd paintings on canvas, I changed them daily, readjusting the tiles compositions according to new elements I kept discovering during my walks. It turned itself into an assumed ongoing process. That same process is attached to my life in the city. So as long as I remain in London, I will never finish this work And I don't necessarily am unhappy with that.
In the meantime, besides my main MA project, I also developed some works using other techniques during unit 3, namely printmaking, gouache, ceramic sculpture and artist books. They kept, however, being associated with my sketchbook drawings, and so to my surroundings. These have a closer connection to my experimental side, not being fully resolved. However, in the near future I intend to explore these different techniques and mediums further, particularly printaming, which I feel I can obtain interesting results while exploring all its diverse range of effects. Artists such as Rembrandt, Goya or Paula Rego did amazing work regarding their printmaking practice which is something that inspires me to continue to explore it.
I believe it is important to mention my sketchbook practice since it has been an element of tremendous importance throughout my MA course. While superficially its usage might seem straightforward, a tool to gather drawings from my surroundings, in reality it is a much more complex, interesting and deep object than I could have imagined. I kept wondering and questioning myself while I was doing research regarding this topic, after all, what is the true purpose of the sketchbook?
Henry Moore used it to depict sheeps with a ball pen, showing his love for these peculiar animals, as we can see in the book Henry Moore’s sheep sketchbook (2003). Pierre Bonnart sketched his adventures while traveling around Europe in an early motorcar with the writer Octave Mirbeau, his friend, and these are fascinating drawing, “unique in Bonnard’s work, both for their unifying theme and humour, and for their range of subject which touches upon virtually every aspect of Bonnards work.” (Nathanson, 1978, p.9)
Sketchbooks can also testify how artists change during their life, a chronological testimony of evolution and transformation. While organizing his numerous sketchbooks, William Turner would “have been conscious of how much his draughtsmanship had altered. By then the assured and pure line of his youth had long gone. Instead of seeking a kind of traced outline of his chosen motif, he adopted a more relaxed approach that summarised and abstracted what he saw to create an approximation, fixed on the page in sinuous and dynamic marks. At other times his sketches are less engaged and more careless, essentially just an instinctive response.” (Warrel, 2014, p.16)
They can also reveal the process of taking decisions, just like with the architect Le Corbousier. Sketchbooks grant us access to the most personal and intimate details of someone’s life. In the case of Jocelyn Herbert, her “notebooks and sketchbooks reflect this integration, providing a fascinating and poignant insight into her domestic life and deep friendships as well as indispensable first-hand evidence of a revolutionary period in British theatre history”. (Courtney, 2011, p.11)
Sketchbooks are mysterious tools, sometimes invisible, myths. The author John Berger explores this idea brilliantly in his book Bento’s Sketchbook in which he undertook a quest in order not to replicate the philosopher's lost sketchbook, but instead to write about about the drawing practice, about the sketchbook as a symbol in someone’s life.
But in the end, what really makes this object so important to me?
I had the privilege to be part and co organize a painters forum about sketchbooks for my MA colleague, alongside professor Paul Codwell. During our meetings preparing this presentation, the question we kept asking each other was about the real purpose of this object. We didn't reach to an objective answer to that question.
However, just like the examples I mentioned above, it is possible and valid to speculate on the sketchbook’s true nature. To me, however, its unique value resides precisely in the fact that there is no way to find a consensual definition of its purpose. By filling his blank pages with drawings, thoughts, secrets, insecurities, the sketchbook becomes something else, it is no longer an object but rather an extension of the artist, the writer, the philosopher. One is undefinable without the other. A reflection of the soul, hiding the most precious secrets.
My first memories are of drawing. It’s the way I found to express myself and understand the world. So to me, the sketchbook is a link to that early pureness. It keeps reminding me that although exhibition, commissions, successful paintings, degrees are fundamental in any artist's career, in the end, what truly matters is a blank piece of paper and a pencil.
I believe it is important to mention my sketchbook practice since it has been an element of tremendous importance throughout my MA course. While superficially its usage might seem straightforward, a tool to gather drawings from my surroundings, in reality it is a much more complex, interesting and deep object than I could have imagined. I kept wondering and questioning myself while I was doing research regarding this topic, after all, what is the true purpose of the sketchbook?
Henry Moore used it to depict sheeps with a ball pen, showing his love for these peculiar animals, as we can see in the book Henry Moore’s sheep sketchbook (2003). Pierre Bonnart sketched his adventures while traveling around Europe in an early motorcar with the writer Octave Mirbeau, his friend, and these are fascinating drawing, “unique in Bonnard’s work, both for their unifying theme and humour, and for their range of subject which touches upon virtually every aspect of Bonnards work.” (Nathanson, 1978, p.9)
Sketchbooks can also testify how artists change during their life, a chronological testimony of evolution and transformation. While organizing his numerous sketchbooks, William Turner would “have been conscious of how much his draughtsmanship had altered. By then the assured and pure line of his youth had long gone. Instead of seeking a kind of traced outline of his chosen motif, he adopted a more relaxed approach that summarised and abstracted what he saw to create an approximation, fixed on the page in sinuous and dynamic marks. At other times his sketches are less engaged and more careless, essentially just an instinctive response.” (Warrel, 2014, p.16)
They can also reveal the process of taking decisions, just like with the architect Le Corbousier. Sketchbooks grant us access to the most personal and intimate details of someone’s life. In the case of Jocelyn Herbert, her “notebooks and sketchbooks reflect this integration, providing a fascinating and poignant insight into her domestic life and deep friendships as well as indispensable first-hand evidence of a revolutionary period in British theatre history”. (Courtney, 2011, p.11)
Sketchbooks are mysterious tools, sometimes invisible, myths. The author John Berger explores this idea brilliantly in his book Bento’s Sketchbook in which he undertook a quest in order not to replicate the philosopher's lost sketchbook, but instead to write about about the drawing practice, about the sketchbook as a symbol in someone’s life.
But in the end, what really makes this object so important to me?
I had the privilege to be part and co organize a painters forum about sketchbooks for my MA colleague, alongside professor Paul Codwell. During our meetings preparing this presentation, the question we kept asking each other was about the real purpose of this object. We didn't reach to an objective answer to that question.
However, just like the examples I mentioned above, it is possible and valid to speculate on the sketchbook’s true nature. To me, however, its unique value resides precisely in the fact that there is no way to find a consensual definition of its purpose. By filling his blank pages with drawings, thoughts, secrets, insecurities, the sketchbook becomes something else, it is no longer an object but rather an extension of the artist, the writer, the philosopher. One is undefinable without the other. A reflection of the soul, hiding the most precious secrets.
My first memories are of drawing. It’s the way I found to express myself and understand the world. So to me, the sketchbook is a link to that early pureness. It keeps reminding me that although exhibition, commissions, successful paintings, degrees are fundamental in any artist's career, in the end, what truly matters is a blank piece of paper and a pencil.
With my critical reflection coming to its end, I'd still like to give some final thoughts about the work which challenged me the most during this year, the one which I will exhibit at the final show, both a symbolic and technical demonstration of all my struggles, steps backwards, but mostly my personal accomplishments during my MA route.
While I write these words, I know this will be the work I am exhibiting at the final show, in Southland Gallery/ Camberwell Space, and even if that decision is taken, I can't help but continuously keep asking myself: is this painting really finished?
Since my arrival to London, in October, I have been put up with many challenges, both artistic and personal. They changed me, my practise, the way I see my work and the world.
Being away from my home country, Portugal, particularly in such a peculiar and delicate time such as the middle of a pandemic, made me look and reflect on those changes with a more accurate perception. Many memories I will deeply take with me regarding this journey. It was an intense year, full of joy, frustration, endless coffee mugs, unforgettable conversation, friendships I'll never lose, love, sadness, but above all, a certainty that I will never stop changing and trying, just like the city of London, just like my paintings.
In the end, that is the nature of artists. There is this Portuguese song whose title Inquietação can be translated to restlessness. The song, just like the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet, talks about this constant dissatisfaction the Portuguese have on getting to somewhere they never truly are. We are a country of poets and sailors, maybe that's why we don't have much money. Our soul makes us constantly try to find something new, even if we don’t exactly know what that thing is.
There was a moment during the course in which I obsessively wanted to produce resolved works without realizing that I couldn’t really understand what that meant to me. Would it be a way to more easily exhibit in galleries, to reach art collectors or have commissions? Those are, evidently, important aspects of an artist's career. But they can not be what moves it and what determines how a work is done.
While trying to depict my surroundings, in the end I'm trying to portray life, life which constant changes and surprises. I also, as an active part of those surroundings, will have to adapt to those circumstances, such as my work, my painting. I believe art has the power to make us remember how important it is to keep questioning what we sometimes take for granted and unmovable, to retain a restless soul, in search of answers, even if we don't know where to find them.
It was a privilege to search for these same answers alongside my fellow MA colleagues and tutors. In the end, there is so much I still need to learn and discover. I know for sure I'll keep walking and drawing, accepting I will constantly change, just like the world around me, just like my painting.
“Walking sometimes means undertaking an inner voyage of discovery. You are shaped by buildings, faces, signs, weather and the atmosphere. Maybe we were made to walk, also in cities? Walking is a combination of movement, humility, balance, curiosity, smell, sound, light and - if you walk far enough - longing. A feeling which reached for something, without finding it. The Portuguese and Brazillians have an untranslatable word for this longing: saudade. It is a word that embrasses love, pain and happiness. It can be the thought of something joyful that disturbs you, or something that brings you plenitude”. (Kagge, 2020, p.28)
References
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Mcfarlane, R. (2012) The Old Ways. London: Penguin Books
Garfield, S. (2013) On the Map. London: Profile Books Ltd
Obrist, H. (2014) Mapping it Out: an Alternative Atlas of Contemporary Cartographies. London: Thames & Hudson
Jean Dubuffet exhibition Brutal Beauty: https://sites.barbican.org.uk/dubuffetguide/?_ga=2.36418144.1533105230.1630276943-2059820822.1630165020
Written text regarding mpressionism: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/i/impressionism
William Kentdrige interview: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/sep/19/charcoal-drawing-william-kentridge
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