The first landscape paintings had to do with the ocean that was two steps away from our house and that I knew very well because I used to go to the beach all year round. This experience was remarkable, but that does not mean that the result that came to happen in the painting had to do with just that, because the works of that time had a dramatic charge that did not exist there, which most likely had its origin in the myths of voyages and epics related to the sea in which 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 scenario where nature manifested its beauty, populating the memories of sensations related to the beach experience and that darker side that seemed to exist in another dimension, hidden from our eyes and that was composed for centuries of a difficult relationship where the sea embodied the brutal forces of nature that always inspired great fear. History tends to relate the perspective of the survivors and the heroes but there were others who included this dark side in their works, particularly in literature, leaving the survivors with an aura of fortunate people who were lucky to escape unscathed to fate and this perspective related to luck, is significant in terms of the dimension of the challenge because it was not enough to be brave. That was the plot that I had retained from history books and from some films by Portuguese authors who had dedicated themselves to the subject and which described the game of luck that it was to enter one of those ships that were nothing more than nutshells in the oceanic immensity. I was interested in keeping in mind this context that carried other colors in the scenery and that's why the landscape was the beginning of a path that started in an immensity of white sand but that at a certain point drifted to a more turbulent stronghold where the rules changed. There was a latent energy that I projected through my imagination that would hardly be left out of the painting equation. The challenge was the identity of the landscape, by loading it with a subjective content, it could lose the sharpness of the representation, transforming the nature into a stage of emotions. I was not interested in scrutinizing the contours of this influence, I was interested in following an intuition through fragmentary images of a context, I hoped to extract from this a form of expression with which I could identify.

It fascinated me to look at that immense amount of water, the concept behind it was disturbing, the force of nature, the variety hidden under the surface that lurked in my diving sessions, was intense and triggered in my imagination images of a robust nature. At the time I didn't have a clear idea of ​​the path I was taking but later I realized that there was a set of works that were related to history. It was perhaps this heritage that led me to become interested in mythologies related to water. In the works of that period, the landscape is a mythical landscape that is inspired by events dispersed in time, sometimes even before the beginning of history and I believe that it was this timelessness that led me to go down that path, all of nature evoked this timelessness because the water was one of the primordial elements that was part of genesis, the one that in creationist myths appeared as the source of life, as if it were a big uterus where everything could fit.

When I started to gather information on the subject, it seemed to me that the liquid element was always in the transition of something, it symbolized change, a universal force that decisively interfered with destiny, religions in particular gave it a purifying value that represented by universal floods capable of completely resetting history and erasing human decay and degeneration from the surface of the earth. This prophetic burden must have accompanied many sailors who set out to sea fully aware that the adventure could end badly. Many left balanced between two curses, on land the bad luck, some escaped the crimes committed, ahead a game of luck over which they had no control.

Another interesting aspect is related to the exploration of nature, in those first years when I used to go to the beach, I dedicated myself to exploring the surroundings and at my scale, that seemed gigantic to me with infinite possibilities, the days were long because I made them long to scour every nook and cranny of this coastline and the result was a habit of observation that left me with many elements to work on later. Naturally, the memories became diffused over time, the details lost sharpness, it is impossible to go back in time and clearly revisit what was the target of my attention, but there was a tenuous information ballast with the configuration of a dream, without lines of precise contours but with a strong identity. It seems plausible to me that the current choice of colors and shapes is not alien to this archive and will probably survive as a guiding model whenever I look at the ocean landscape.

Ponta do sal is an appropriate name for a peninsula that enters the sea like a ship's bow. Every time I revisit the site I feel like I'm on a journey across the clean horizon of the ocean. We feel like breathing in the salty breeze, maybe that's why it has that name - Ponta do Sal - (the last piece of salty land)

My connection with the place is a long story that began the moment I went there for the first time as a kid. I imagine that at that time I would have been impressed by the sheer cliffs and the variety of nooks and crannies that existed there. Eventually, in the beginning, it was the beach that took me there. I attended it every year during the summer months and as a result I had plenty of time to explore everything and get to know every inch of land.

After a while, I know that it was his quality in incarnating the symbolism of the Atlantic finisterra, which made the site an icon representing my experience with the maritime landscape. There are other impressive sites along the coast but this one is made special by being so familiar.

 

Ponta do Sal has everything to do with the contact line between the sea and the land, where there is always a certain amount of friction because this border is never absolutely stable, there is a dynamic that takes place in different time cycles, some of these phenomena , are noticeable on our time scale, others not so much, certain things take a long time to happen and we barely notice the change, we feel the waves coming and going and not the modulation that water and wind make on the rock surface along centuries.

When I look back on this stone sidewalk cut by black furrows, I see it as a deserted place, not much frequented, usually by fishermen who perched on the last rocks of the cape, swaying over the waves that came to crumble into skeins of white foam. During the summer, on the beach, hundreds of people spread their towels and lay comfortably in the shade of their parasols, but we, a small group of restless boys, preferred the irregular carpet of the rocky blocks further north where few ventured. It was there that we spent most of our time, perched on this rough ground in the shadow of the crumbling cliffs above that boasted sumptuous crevices to remind us that at any time one of those monsters could break free and join the huge pile at our feet , a threat that didn't push us away, because there was no memory of anyone ever having seen one of those big blocks fall. For us, who walked around under those giant masses in precarious balance, it wasn't a drama, on the contrary, we felt we were exploring a new land as if it were the adventure of our lives.

When the tide came in and the waves hit the rocks, we still stayed there feeling the salty splashes and only at the end of the day when the tide went out again, we leave the place with the skin tanned by the sun and a tast of salt in our lips.

There are countless photographs I've taken of this place and every now and then I come across reproductions in my archives, with images of the typical rock formations that exist there with bizarre shapes, which seen from certain angles, look like animals sleeping in the sun. I often use these images as models in charcoal drawings that are no more than exercises in the texture and shape that evolve into more abstract developments about the landscape.

Over the years, this place has remained a reference for Atlantic landscapes and many of the graphic elements that appear in the works are somehow related to what is observed there. In particular the series "Idealization about factual occurrences" brings together references to some aspects that I have come across over the years. This series includes several works in which techniques of drawing, painting, photography, collage and sculpture are used and the collection expands in various directions and it is often difficult to know how knowledge of landscape and memory are separated subjects, eventually there are other layers of information caught up in fleeting memories or expressionless fragments that for some reason stick to this Atlantic imagery.

The central point is the immersive presence of the ocean that immediately transports us to an introspective isolation with its sparkling surface that on bright days dazzles our vision. There are other fascinating factors such as the shape of the rocks visible in the cuts of the cliffs, their colors in undulating layers that look like residues of a fossilized ocean, that are fluid lines that continue the oscillatory movement of the waves. In some works, geometric shapes emerge, they are representations of the world traced in straight lines that is related to the urban landscape visible from afar, constructions that appear behind the first line of the coast and represent the human presence that here in the cape, in the open space in front to the sea, are diluted because they are just a line subordinated by the immensity of the waters that irresistibly call to us.

A few years ago I compiled a large set of photos of the rock outcrops that exist on this platform. The objective was to print copies and add them to the canvas to obtain a rigid base where I could superimpose several different layers that could evoke the different aspects of the place, the liquid horizon with its oscillating movements, the graphics of the cliffs, the curved and mimetic shapes of the rocks eroded by the force of innumerable tides, even by the presence in the distance of the city rising behind the profile of the coast.

A sanctuary from where the future peeks

Over several decades, Ponta do Sal was a stage revisited many times by me and my friends. I remember watching the sunset over and over again in every possible combinations, all year long. There were happy days and more dramatic ones, when that place seemed to be the only piece of land protected from the convulsions of time, the ideal place to catch the breath of youthful adventures, to get in step with life. There was also the café across the Marginal Road where conversations often took the form of intricate and confused philosophical debates that were the natural consequence of existential crises of growth. Being there was like jumping off a moving train and landing on your feet in a safe place, beyond the context shakes. The clear perspective of the ocean in front of us was perhaps one of the factors that induced tranquility, this feeling of being protected from the insanity of the world and human diatribes, of being sheltered in a sanctuary where the dark corpulences of uncertain futures do not enter, a space hit by ocean winds that expelled from our consciousness the doubts of the green years; the ghosts of a routine life; of the institutional obligations represented by the thoughtful complexion of our parents' generation, all this retreated to the continental lower like a diffuse fog .

 After that, and for several decades, Ponta do Sal was a revisited stage and many conversations took place in pleasant afternoons regarding any subject that our imagination could bring up. They were often social gatherings that lasted through lazy afternoons of fishing with a rod in hand, waiting for a fish to bite.

The beach was not only frequented during the day, especially in the summer it was normal to find people in small groups gathered around a radio or drinking, snuggled in sand nests. One day, late in the day, we arrived in Ponta do Sal after a party in a crowded cellar. As always happened in that place, it was the sound of the waves that dominated the night, at a certain point when this rhythm started to take over us, a boy with a huge backpack emerged from the shadow, he spoke in a friendly manner and said he was traveling across the country and had chosen that place to spend the night. He asked if he could join us. Direct-eyed, hair in disarray, he had a blissful expression of good news and seemed eager to talk. He took his place at the circle and started asking questions, in fact he didn't seem at all embarrassed to be among strangers as almost immediately he began to tell the story of his journey through South America where he became aware of certain ritual practices that had radically changed his perspective on life. He told stories that seemed like fantasies to us, little used to magic and supernatural ideas. He kept talking and at a certain point we were all too tired to discern whether or not the whole conversation had some kind of logic and so we were falling into a blissful torpor in front of the roguish account of his adventures. The boy did not stop talking and every minute he seemed more invigorated as if the words coming out of his mouth brought together an extraordinary energy that kept him more and more awake, at a certain point he seemed so energized that his figure resembled a goblin that had emerged from the underground charged with strength, ready to spring into action with its magical abilities. It was there that I heard the expression Shamanism for the first time and the conversation continued until he proposed a reading about our destiny. We didn't immediately realize what he was talking about until he explained that he could read the future through the combination of some special stones he kept in his backpack. One of the girls in the group volunteered for the experiment and Afonso, that was his name, took out a small dark skin bag and took out a few irregularly shaped stones that looked like colored crystals, then he placed on the floor a black handkerchief with drawn circles and started to sing, he had his eyes closed and looked very focused, it was obvious he was taking it very seriously, then he threw the stones to the cloth and from the random arrangement, he began to weave considerations about generic things that could be in the way of any of us. Mafalda who seemed eager to visit the labyrinths of fate was sipping every word as they were an absolute truth, now he stared at her intensely, she seemed suspended in those eyes but for us on the side, it seemed more like a session of prophecies invented on the spur of the moment from Afonso's intuition, who was very attentive to the girl reaction. It remains to be seen whether such conjectures about the future had any influence on Mafalda's fate, but they certainly opened up a path that did not exist before.

Afonso's spoken chant remained in our memory, a kind of rap cadenced by strange expressions of meaning that he colored with imaginative sentences. The practical result of the conversation was like consulting an oracle of dubious phrases that Mafalda didn't quite know how to interpret, that could mean many things. Later, when the concept of shamanism was no longer so strange to me, I saw a curious allegory in this event, the place in Ponta do Sal that had everything to be considered a critical point in our wanderings, was after all like Afonso's map of circles with the diference that the stones who tumbled down the ravines could have been thrown by giants that expect to see in their disposition in the edge of the land, hidden meanings about the state of things, about the well-kept secrets of nature. An interesting allegory considering that the site was for us like a sanctuary, the point where we looked out to the limitless horizon, the cape where the state of the world was announced, but only for those who wanted to see it and we were full of desire to move towards the future. Afonso also saw something remarkable in that place and described this impression in a way that was familiar to us when he said that he felt the cadence of the waves sculpting the landscape like a perpetual calendar and saw it in the skin of the rock, polished by winds and tides, a gesture of the earth itself, peeking out from the abysses to reach the salty atmosphere of the seashore and the balance of time through the rhythm of the waves. This guy really knew how to express himself.