During my time in the South of Portugal, I got lost in the cliffs and caves of Carvoeiro. I collected some materials from the rocky site: clay powder, dry flowers... I took them back to the studio. I wanted to intertwine them together with the fantasised description of Nature and the reality of materiality: the soil, the pigments, the flowers...
I focused on colours, the play of textures to create modelling clays: mixing pigments, wax, oil and clay from the cliffs I visited. Like a “Play-do”(pate à modeler) these clays are used as paint directly on the canvas: alluding to the banal while rediscovering the fusional harmony of art and life - of us as a child. Tinged with reality and abstraction, and working towards an understanding of the representation of mineral Nature, this project barques on a journey both to tangible and imaginary landscapes.
Attracted to the picturesque, I found these aspects very much present in the “weathering” of this landscape. The burning cliffs (in relation to their colours - orange, terracotta, cream - and the intense blue of the sky and the sea. In a world of fast and over-present questioning about Nature, my fascination for Nature finds itself reflected in these landscapes. This wandering adventure in the seashore was for me the opportunity to create a series of paintings (back in Amsterdam), to bring to life my view on a reinterpretation of Portuguese reliefs.
The titles of the paintings are extracted from SALSUGEM from the Portuguese poet Al Berto.