Words & Images

          

          My creative journey started when I was 12 years old attending the Pan-American School of Art of São Paulo for 3 years. This initial encounter with the fine arts world taught me basic techniques in which to explore my innate talent. Still life and landscape drawing, perspective, anatomy, portraiture, pen & ink, charcoal, pastels and colour application were some of the skills I practiced.

          In addiction to art I had a keen interest in writing and used to imagine myself scripting a telenovela with socio-cultural messages incorporating dramatic storylines. Concrete poetry was also one of my favourite writing methods and I often made my school essays in this form, gaining attention from my teachers and excelling on my marks. When the time to decide which undergraduate course to apply to came, I chose Journalism as it seemed to me a more commercially viable career in Brazil. Once at university I confronted myself with a third world reality that I did not wish to write about but from a technical point of view it had an enormous impact on my artistic visualization.
          A turning point occurred when I was assigned to write an article about street kids. I observed that these kids covered themselves with pages of broadsheet newspapers to keep warm during the night – the  same communication vehicle my article was supposed to be printed on. Needless to say the outcome of my life was changed forever and I decided that what I wanted to do with a broadsheet newspaper was to see and transform the raw material into a different message. I wanted to see beauty and for that I started to develop collages. 
          Soon after graduating in 1995 I came to London and what was to be an adventurous gap year became my artistic life driven force as I found all the inspiration, evidence, visual aid and a recycle box full of printed matters from which my collage activities and writing flourished - a sustainable method of transforming a piece of written paper into a work of art.