Lisboetas

Before I came to Portugal in 2017, I did not know a whole lot about Portuguese artists besides Paula Rego, whose work I discovered thanks to the extraordinary exhibition at Tate Britain in London in 2004. Upon my arrival, I was soon introduced to Fernando Pessoa and a few other icons who are reproduced in every possible way and feature everywhere in Lisbon, from museums to souvenir shops. My natural curiosity wanted me to dig deeper. I therefore began my research on Portuguese artists, writers, musicians, choreographers, architects and so on, looking at their works at museums, reading about their lives, and plowing through internet image searches for photographical documentation.

For there is far more to Portuguese culture than Fernando Pessoa, as I quickly discovered thanks to my lisboetas research. And these artists – less-well known outside Portugal –, overshadowed by fridge magnets shaped as Pessoa’s hat and sold to tourists on every corner of the city, deserve to be brought to light. Given that immersing myself in Portuguese culture was not just a personal goal but part of my work as an artist during my time in Portugal, I got determined to make my own visual contribution to the city by creating the portraits of these other lisboetas.

Naturally, since none of them are alive any more, I had no choice but to work from found photographs – always a challenge for a painter when they are presented with a limited view of the model’s face. This meant that these portraits would be not about capturing a particular moment in time, nor about painting one’s character and personality (an impossible task, unless you know the sitter). Instead, they became more like tribute paintings, my personal way of honouring these fascinating people. In order to emphasise the fact that these were not live sitters, but rather historical figures reproduced in popular culture, I chose to juxtapose the black and white portraits with colourful backgrounds for which I chose various spots in the city. I was not trying to match the person with a landscape which bears some significance to their life, for my idea is that these people would have been found anywhere. My lisboetas are intertwined with the landscape because that is how I think about them – as an inherent part of the city, traceable and almost tangible on many a street corner and alleyway.

These half-portrait/half-landscape collages have been drawn from the perspective of a foreigner, an outsider, whose perception of the city is a patchwork of fragmented spatial memories, colours and moods. There is no linear way of getting to know a place and its history; it is an accidental collage of places and information, a bespoke map painted in our minds with more or less detail and accuracy. I have used an impressionistic style because these are indeed my own impressions of Lisbon and those lisboners who walked its streets and forever imprinted themselves in the memory of the city and its inhabitants.

The first version of the portrait series — in the form of pastel drawings — was exhibited at a solo show between 14 April – 26 May 2018 at Photo Eat gallery in Amadora, Portugal. The second version of the series — paintings on canvas — was presented on 10th June 2019 at the Portuguese Embassy in Warsaw as part of Dia de Portugal, The Day of Portugal, hosted by Ambassador Luís Cabaço.