ONE ARTIST. TWO WAYS OF WORKING.
I have been drawing for as long as I can remember.
Art has always been part of my life, a natural way of observing, questioning and creating.
Over the years, my practice has taken different forms, from sketchbooks and figure studies to painting, from intimate and personal works to more spontaneous and direct forms of expression.
THE DRAWING
CAME FIRST.
Long before BESSA and MATTO became two distinct bodies of work, there was drawing.
Sketchbooks, portraits, figure studies and experiments with different media became a constant practice, less a formal exercise than an instinctive way for me to think through images.
Many of these works date from the early 2000s and remain part of my personal archive.
THE WORK
LEFT THE STUDIO.
Drawing eventually moved beyond the sketchbook into painting and works made to be seen, exhibited and sold.
I presented my work in different settings across Portugal, including a collective exhibition at the Monastery of Arouca, as well as presentations in Posto de Turismo Gaia, Foz do Douro and Lagos. During those years, I sold around one hundred works, many of which entered private collections.
Today, works from that period remain in private collections across Portugal and elsewhere in Europe, including Barcelona, Salamanca, Milan, Lyon and Lazio.
O Pequeno Amor, 2005
Oil on canvas · 50 × 60 cm · Private collection
Painted when I was twenty, during a deeply personal period, this work depicts a solitary figure held in the hand of God, contemplating his fragile heart amid an apparently endless sea.
Above, a narrow opening in the clouds allows light to reach him.
A DIFFERENT
VISUAL PATH.
In the years that followed, I built my professional career around graphic design and visual communication.
Painting gradually became less present, but visual creation never disappeared.
Drawing, composition, colour and visual storytelling remained part of my everyday practice.
What changed was the medium, not the impulse to create.
THE WORK
CONTINUES.
Returning to physical work did not feel like starting again. It felt like returning to a language that had never entirely disappeared.
Today, that practice develops through two distinct identities.