A first series, completed
Updated: Aug 12
From Diagram to Life: A Series Between Geometry and Painting
Today, I am closing a chapter in my studio practice. It is the first one I feel I can bring to a close, having reached a proper conclusion.
(And I am sure this statement will come back to bite me in the ass a few months from now, when I decide I want to add something else after all!)
BUT... I believe the time has come. I tend to keep many things going at once, and it is time to focus my attention on other ideas.
Especially because this is probably my oldest series and the one that best represents the transition I have undergone over these past few years. From diagram to life, from my rational and organised world to a new life: more colourful, more organic and fluid. Without a defined path. But with plenty of challenges.
Looking back, this body of work really began in September 2023, when I had absolutely no idea where it would lead.
During studio practice, I was given an exercise that began with choosing a place. There were not many restrictions, only that it should be a contained space without being excessively small or somehow conceptual. It had to be a physical space. It seemed like a particularly useful way to begin my artistic practice because it allowed me to base my work on something from reality. In other words, it gave me something concrete to start from. It also helped me develop ways of visually documenting the aspects that interested me.
I chose the abandoned railway station in Barreiro, next to the river. I found its architecture interesting, and the passage of time, visible in the deterioration of the building, offered the possibility of exploring different conceptual layers. The river has also been important throughout my life, as part of the journey between my home and the different places where I have studied and worked in Lisbon, so it was something I wanted to capture too.
But did I think about all of this when the station first came to mind? Of course not. At the time, it was simply a curiosity, an attraction towards something I wanted to explore. Only later was I able to articulate these aspects and understand the reasons behind my choice.
At the time, I was guided solely by intuition. One of the things that caught my attention was the light. Since the station faces almost directly west, the sunset came in through the windows. Curiously, from the other side of the building, it was also possible to see the light passing through them when peering through small openings, including the keyholes themselves.
These are perhaps some of my favourite images of this place. However, they have not yet been the ones to feed into later work, at least so far. In any case, I am keeping this documentation as something I may want to return to in the future. And I suppose writing this text is one way of preserving that memory for myself.
I was also interested in documenting geometric architectural details, circles and repeated patterns. Some of these later developed into geometric diagrams. This exercise was essential in making me realise that I was far more interested in details than in a broader view of the building. In a way, there was an “aversion” to seeing the whole and a desire to focus on small “curiosities”. For better or worse, some of these curiosities are decorative features of the building. This raises a question I have not yet resolved about their “validity” within the artistic field and the role they play in my work in particular. But I will leave that question for another time.
Returning to the documentation of details, I also noticed an interest in placing some of these elements at the centre of the image. In a way, this was another potentially controversial choice, described as uncreative and obvious. Flat and uninteresting, in the opinion of some.
But I was so frustrated by not being able to photograph, for example, the clock straight on and perfectly centred that, at one point, I considered getting a drone for that purpose. An exaggeration, since I was reminded that I could simply make a diagram of its elements. And so I did.
These geometric drawings are particularly dear to me because they gave rise to a pair of paintings for which I have enormous affection. They are, in fact, the starting point for the body of work that followed.
And this is where another of those curious moments involving the mind and the emergence of creativity comes in. I did not sit down and decide that I was going to turn these diagrams into paintings. Something just clicked. I was probably trying to fall asleep or taking a shower, two of my most productive moments for new ideas... and the concept and image for the first painting simply came to me.
I hate that this might be confused with ideas such as “it had to exist” or “it was meant to be”. BAH... I am not at all inclined towards that sort of thing. But, annoyingly, many of my new ideas do emerge in moments like this. I prefer to believe that it is nothing more than our brains, during moments of natural drift, making possible connections and bringing them into consciousness.
After making these paintings, I began to notice how often I was already producing similar images in my daily life. My grandmother’s flowers. Small details of the plants at home. Other small rosettes or architectural details I encountered while out walking. It was all already there, as was my interest in visually taking each of these images apart and observing the geometry that composes them.
And so, a chain of moments, from the place-based exercise to my choice of the station and the various forms of documentation I produced there, gave rise to a series that I am today declaring complete.
You can see here all the works that are part of the From Diagram to Life series.
