A first closed series
- 16 hours ago
- 4 min read
From design to life - a series between geometry and painting.
Today I'm closing a chapter in my studio work, the first one I feel I can close and that has reached a proper conclusion.
(And surely this statement will come back to bite me in the ass in a few months when I decide that I still want to add something more after all!)
BUT… I believe it’s time. I tend to keep many fronts open and it’s time to focus my attention on other ideas.
Primarily because this is probably the oldest and the one that best represents the life transition I've made over these years. From planning to real life, from my rational and organized world to a new life: more colorful, more organic and fluid. Without a defined path. But with many challenges.
Looking back, this series of works actually began in September 2023, completely without the slightest idea of where it was going.
In my studio practice, I was suggested an exercise that began with choosing a place. There weren't many restrictions, only that it be a limited space but not excessively small, nor overly conceptual. It had to be a physical space. This seemed a particularly useful way to begin my artistic practice because it allowed me to base it on something from reality, that is, to start from something. It also helped develop a visual record of aspects that interested us.
I chose the abandoned train station in Barreiro, next to the river. For me, it had interesting architectural aspects, and the passage of time implicit in the building's decay allowed me to explore different conceptual layers. The river has also been important to me throughout my life, as a point of passage between my home and the different places of study and work in Lisbon, so it was something I also wanted to capture.
But did I think all of that when the station first came to mind? Of course not. It was just curiosity, an attraction to explore something. Later I was able to articulate those aspects and understand the reasons behind the choice.
At the time, I was guided only by intuition. And one of the things that caught my attention was the light. Since the station faced almost west, it received the sunset through the windows, and curiously, it was also possible to see the light coming through the windows from the other side of the building when we peeked through small holes, like the keyholes themselves.
These are perhaps some of my favorite images of this place, but they haven't yet been among those that have enriched later work (at least not yet). In any case, I keep the records as something interesting to revisit later. And I suppose that writing this text is a way of preserving this memory for myself.
I was also interested in documenting geometric architectural details, circles, and repeated patterns. These later evolved into geometric diagrams in some cases. This exercise was fundamental in making me realize that I was much more interested in details than in the broader view of the building. In a way, it was an "aversion" to seeing the whole and a desire to focus on small "curiosities." Unfortunately or fortunately, some of these curiosities are decorative aspects of the building, which will generate a question I haven't yet resolved about their "validity" in the artistic field and what role they play in my work in particular. But I'll leave that question for another time.
Returning to the issue of detail recording, I also noticed an interest in focusing on some of these elements. In a way, this is also a potentially controversial choice, considered uncreative and obvious. Flat and uninteresting in the opinion of some.
But such was the frustration of not being able to centrally photograph, for example, the clock, that at one point I thought about getting a drone for the job. An exaggeration, because I was reminded that I could very well make a diagram of the elements – and so I did.
These geometric designs are particularly dear to me because they gave rise to a pair of paintings that I hold dear. And which are effectively the starting point for the series of works that followed.
And here comes another one of those curious moments about our minds and how creativity arises. I didn't sit down and decide I was going to turn these sketches into paintings. It was a click. I must have been trying to sleep or take a shower, two of the most productive times for new ideas… and the concept and image for the first painting simply came to me.
I hate that this could be confused with ideas like "it had to exist" or "it was destiny." Bah... I'm nothing like that. But stupidly, many of my new ideas are born from moments like this. I want to believe that it's nothing more than our brain, in moments of natural drift, putting together possible connections and bringing them to consciousness.
Because after these paintings were finished, I began to realize how often I already made similar records in my daily life. My grandmother's flowers. Small details of the houseplants. Other small rosettes or architectural details from when I went for a walk. It was all there, as well as the interest in visually deconstructing each of these records and observing the geometry that composes them.
And so, a series of interconnected moments, from the exploration of the location to the choice of season and my varied recordings, gave birth to a series that I now declare complete.
