Idealization about factual events

The first landscape paintings were about the ocean, which was a short distance from our house and which I knew very well because I used to go to the beach all year round. This experience was remarkable, but that doesn't mean that the result that came with the painting had to do only with this, because the works of that time, had a dramatic charge that in reality didn't exist there, which most likely had its origins in the myths and epics related to sea voyages. In these stories there was always a strong link with the cosmic forces that had the power to change the destiny of men. The landscape could be two things at the same time: a setting where nature manifested its beauty, filling memories with the experience of the beach, and in a more dramatic dimension, a darker side, hidden from our eyes and that had been built up over centuries of a difficult relationship, in which the sea embodied the brutal forces of nature that always inspired great fear. History usually tells the story from the perspective of survivors and heroes, but there were others who were victims of the elements, shipwrecked on endless voyages, who somehow left a darker and more sinister record of these adventures and who later, through the hands of poets and writers, became important pieces of literature. These stories, as in the case of The Lusíadas, recounted the maritime saga from the perspective of the simple and courageous people who gave their bodies to the manifesto in an unequal fight, bold guys who came out of hell with a story to tell.

This was the plot that I had retained from history books and from the works of some Portuguese authors who had dedicated themselves to the subject, and whose texts impressed me with the way they described the boldness of those sailors who ran an enormous risk by boarding those ships that were nothing more than nutshells in the turbulent immensity of the ocean. I was interested in keeping in mind this context that brings other colors to the scenario. For me, these two landscapes, the real and the poetic, blended together, blurring the boundaries between light and shadow, between the beautiful white sand beaches and the strongholds of the turbulent imagination, were combined, and they were the engine to build my paintings

In relation to the seascape, there was a latent energy, a diffuse profile that projected itself into my imagination, which would hardly be left out of the painting equation. The challenge was to define the identity of a landscape with these two facets that, although very different, complemented each other like the sides of a coin, incorporating the natural image and at the same time a subjective content related to myths and legends, the bright side of the landscape with the dark side of fear and insecurity, the normal and the insane, a combination with the potential to transform the natural scenery into a stage for emotions.

As a working method, I wasn't interested in detailing how the real and the imaginary could combine, I was interested in following my intuition and using feeling and experience as a creative source, in a direct way, without the weight of narrative, an instant expression of this stimulation, I hoped to extract from this a form of expression with which I could identify.

My fascination with the seascape grew with me. Looking at that immense amount of water always instigated my imagination; it was a dubious experience, with its side of harmony and pleasure and at the same time of discomfort and fear. The serene surface of the waters seduced me like the song of a siren, with the intention of draw me into its depths. The concept behind it was disturbing, the immense force of nature, the variety hidden beneath the surface, the menace of the deep that I experienced in my amateur diving sessions, the risk of being submerged in an environment where we could not survive for long; it was an experience where pleasure and fear combined in a strange way, leaving a bitter and sweet taste. I think it was from this dichotomy that, from a very early stage, I began to build the foundations of the theme "Finisterra Experience".

The beginning - When the world was a paradise and there was always a beach of golden sands nearby.

In the early works of this period, the landscape is mythical and uses symbolic elements that represent ideas and facts that do not correspond to a logical reality but that aim to give body to an expression in keeping with the "spirit of the moment". The symbols can be ancient navigational instruments, armillary spheres, decrepit ships, glimpses of an "Atlantis" emerging from the diffuse shadows of a foggy morning, a paradise lost and then found again, after the audacity of original sin. All of this is added to the idea of ​​landscape like a multisensory experience that is not confined to historical time or the geography of reality; this landscape is a combination of all of these things.

It was easy to lose track of time looking at majestic surface of the ocean. The seashore, with its light and beauty, made paradise a real thing, the myth was real, each moment seemed like it could last forever. That was the feeling that defined the oceanic landscape, a place in the imagination that could represent the beginning of all things. In the myth of genesis, water was one of the primordial elements, the one that in creationist myths appeared as the source of life, as if it were a great womb where everything could fit. When I began to collect information about these myths, it seemed to me that the liquid element was always in transition from chaos to order, symbolizing change, a universal force that shaped destiny. Religions in particular gave it a purifying value; universal floods completely reset history, obliterating human decadence and degeneration from the surface of the earth. This mythological burden must have haunted the darkest moments of many sailors who set out to sea in the full awareness that the adventure could end badly. Even today, this negative connotation has not completely disappeared, the oceans are still a mystery, its vastness still hides much knowledge and their importance and influence on the destiny of the planet, is once again a central theme of civilization.

During the process of making the paintings, another aspect gained importance: the exploration of nature. In those early years, going almost every day to the beach, I dedicated myself to exploring the coast and on my scale, it seemed gigantic to me. The days were long because I made the most of them, I searched every corner of the beach and the result was a habit of observation that led me to record many things that I later came to use as pieces of a graphic vocabulary. After all these years,naturally, memories became blurred, details lost definition. It is impossible to revisit clearly what was my focus at that time, but the essential was recorded and would remain to this day, the important elements were consolidating in my head and the identity of that landscape gained its expression. It seems plausible to me that the choice of colors and shapes that became characteristic of the paintings of that period have everything to do with this record of my early days and will probably always subsist as a model that brings together, in a codified way, a whole range of experiences. After all, that is what the painting is intended to be.

Ponta do Sal - the place where the land meets the sea.

Ponta do Sal is a small peninsula near Cascais. This place is all about the line of contact between the sea and land. There is always friction there, because this border is never absolutely stable, there is a dynamic of change that occurs on different time scales, which occurs in cycles that overlap and interact with each other. Some of these phenomena are perceptible to us, others take so long to happen that we don't even notice them. We feel the coming and going of the waves but not the the sculpting effect that water and wind cause on the rock over the centuries. We notice that the sand is more or less on the beach each year but we never see the crumbling of the cliffs and the changes that this makes to the coastline.

At Ponta do Sal there is a flat limestone rock, worked by the water over hundreds of years. When I think of these black grooves cut into the surface of the rock, I see them as a map of one of these temporal cycles that take a long time to happen. There is a false rigidity, because after all, this hard mass will be molded by the persistence of the water. Once again the liquid element, with its softness and fluidity, imposes an enormous force capable of breaking the stone. Perhaps the perception of this quality, when observed carefully, is reason to see the oceans as an anergy that can change the destiny of many things.

It was at Ponta do Sal that I spent much of my time watching the fishermen who perched on the last rocks of the cape, swaying over the waves that broke just below them in balls of white foam.

During the summer, on the sand, hundreds of people spread out their towels and lay comfortably under their parasols, but we, a small group of restless boys, preferred the irregular carpet of the rocky blocks further north, where few ventured. That was where we spent most of our time, perched on the rough ground at the edge of the crumbling cliffs. Above us were sumptuous crevices to remind us that at any moment, one of those monsters could break free and join the enormous pile that was already there, a threat that did not keep us away because we could not remember anyone ever seeing one of those huge blocks fall. For us who played beneath those giant masses, it was not a drama; on the contrary, we felt like we were exploring a new frontier, as if it were the adventure of our lives.

Over the years, this place has remained a reference for the Atlantic landscape and many of the graphic elements that appear in my works over the years, are in some way, related to that early experience. At a certain point, the "Finisterra Experience" series gave rise to a subgroup of paintings in which techniques of drawing, painting, photography, collage and sculpture were used, all together in the same works and so the collection expands in several directions, it is difficult to know in what way knowledge of the landscape and memory are separate subjects, eventually there are other layers of information coming from fleeting memories or fragments of events lost in time, that for some reason, stick to this Atlantic environment.

The central point of this series is the all-encompassing presence of the ocean, which immediately transports us to an introspective state of mind, with its sparkling surface that dazzles our vision on bright days. There are other fascinating factors, such as the shape of the rocks that are visible in the cuts of the cliffs, with their contrasting colors in undulating layers, that mimic a fossilized ocean and that give continuity to the oscillating movement of the waves. In some works from this phase, there are geometric shapes that are stylized representations of the urban landscape visible in the distance, buildings that emerge behind the first line of the coast. The city was a glimpse in the distance, seen from the cape it was barely noticeable because in the open space in front of the ocean, it was just a shadow. subordinated to the immensity of the waters that irresistibly call us in another direction.Time passed and over the decades, Ponta do Sal was a sanctuary that me and my friends revisited many times. I remember watching the sunset over and over again, in all possible ways, throughout all the seasons of the year. There were happy days and others not so much, but that place always seemed to be the only piece of solid ground, sheltered from the convulsions of time, the ideal place to catch our breath from youthful adventures, to find our footing in life. There was also the café on the other side of the Marginal Road, where conversations often turned into intricate and confusing philosophical debates, which were the natural consequence of the existential crises of growing up. Being there, testing theories about the future, was like jumping off a moving train and landing on your feet without any problem, it was a fun skill to test our limits. The clear view of the ocean in front of us was one of the factors that induced tranquility in us, this feeling of being protected from the insanity of the world, of being sheltered in a sanctuary where the dark mass of uncertain futures did not exist, made it one of the best places we could be, a finisterra beaten by the oceanic winds that expelled from our consciousness the doubts of our early years, that sheltered us from the ghosts of a routine life, from the institutional obligations represented by the self-absorbed complexion of our parents generation, sending all the unwanted things to a continental interior, forgotten by us, erased by the diffuse fog of sleepless mornings.

After that, and over the course of several decades, Ponta do Sal was a revisited stage and many conversations took place on pleasant afternoons, about any subject that our imagination remembered to bring up. Usually, they were get-togethers that extended into lazy afternoons of fishing, waiting for a bite. The beach was not only visited during the day. Especially in the summer, it was normal to find people in groups huddled around a radio or having a few drinks, nestled in holes they dug in the sand still warm from the day's heat. One night, late, we arrived at Ponta do Sal after a party in a crowded basement, longing for the fresh air. As always happened in that place, it was the sound of the waves that dominated the night. At a certain point, when this enchanting rhythm was beginning to take hold of us and sleep was already looming, the figure of a young man dressed in black appeared from the shadows, carrying a huge backpack. He spoke in a friendly manner and said he was traveling around the country and had chosen that place to spend the night. He asked if he could join us. With a direct gaze, disheveled hair, he had the expression of someone who has good news and seemed eager to talk. He took his place in the circle and began asking questions; in fact, he didn't seem at all embarrassed to be among strangers. Right after the icebreaker that had been the usual questions, he never stopped talking and began to describe his long saga through South America. Far away, in a place where the devil lost his boots, he had met people who practiced certain rituals that had radically changed his perspective on life. The guy told stories that to us were the fantasies of a madman: witchcraft, sorcery, fortune-telling. He was full of energy and as he spoke, he seemed increasingly excited about his own story. In the middle of all that, the group was already half asleep, too dizzy to discern whether or not the whole conversation had any kind of logic. Little by little, one by one, we began to fall into a pleasant stupor, but the boy kept chattering, as if the words, as they left his mouth, gathered an extraordinary energy that kept him more and more awake. At a certain point he seemed so energized that, what we saw among us, was an electric elf recounting secrets and fantasies from a strange land. It was there that I heard the term Shamanism for the first time. Tthe conversation continued until he suggested that we do a reading about our destiny. We didn't immediately understand what he was talking about, until he explained that he could read the future in stones, not just any stones, only the ones he kept in his backpack and which he said were special. One of the girls in the group volunteered to the experiment and Alphonse, that was his name, took out a small dark leather bag and took out a few irregularly shaped stones that looked like colored crystals. He then placed a black handkerchief with concentric circles on the floor and, in a deep voice, began to chant. He was calmer now, his eyes were closed and he seemed very focused, and it was obvious that he was taking this very seriously. He threw the stones onto the cloth and, from that random arrangement, began to make considerations about generic things that could stand in the way of any of us. Mafalda, who seemed anxious to discover her own destiny, absorbed each sentence as if it were an absolute truth. Perhaps because his gaze was fixed on her intensely, she seemed suspended in those words, but for us, who were a little wary, it seemed more like a session of prophecies invented according to Alphonse's intuition, who was very attentive to how the girl reacted to his words. We still don't know if such conjectures about the future had any influence on Mafalda's destiny, but they certainly opened up a path that didn't exist before.

Alphonse's shamanic song remained in our memory, a kind of rhythmic rap, modulated by vivid expressions and enigmatic meanings. The practical result of the conversation was like consulting an oracle with a dubious meaning in its words that Mafalda didn’t quite know how to interpret and that could mean many things. Later, when the concept of shamanism was no longer so strange to me, I saw in this event a curious allegory; the place of Ponta do Sal, which had everything to be considered a neuralgic point of our wanderings, was after all like Alphonse’s map of circles, except that there the stones fell down the ravines, as if they were thrown by a giant who expected to see in their arrangement at the water’s edge, hidden meanings about the state of things, about the well-kept secrets of nature. An interesting allegory considering that the place was like a sanctuary for us, the point where we spied the sea, the cape where the state of the world was announced for anyone who wanted to see it. Alphonse also saw something remarkable in that place and described it to us in a way that was familiar to us. He said that he felt the rhythm of the waves sculpting the landscape like a perpetual calendar. He saw in the skin of the rock polished by winds and tides, a gesture of the earth itself breaking through the tectonic layers, from the abysses, until finally reaching the salty atmosphere. By the end of the night, most of us were not convinced by Alphonse's ability to read the future in the stones, but when it came to his eloquence, there was no doubt that the boy knew how to express himself.