Someone very small in the midle of something very big

A thunder ripped through the harsh winter sky and echoed through the ravines on the north side of the Envendos mountain range, climbing with loud booms across the rocky ridges that separate the high sierras from the Alto Alentejo plains. At that precise moment I was at the top of a hill and had barely started my bicycle tour when the flash of lightning shortly anticipated the atmospheric boom. A hank of black clouds approached from the north, laden with humidity and pushing a cold wind that stirred the leaves of the eucalyptus trees around me. At the moment the thunder exploded, a tightness was felt in the air as if space was sucked into the earth and only the skeleton of a gloomy reality remained. It is at the moment the sound column passes that nature retracts, all the birds are silent and for a while nothing moves, then you feel that cold wind again that comes from the foothills of Serra da Estrela to damage the orchards and vineyards. I chose the wrong day to go to the Cabril valley, the light is terrible and the wind won't keep me quiet for long. In my backpack I have a notebook and some black stone pencils, I was hoping to make some sketches of a rock formation that exists there, the great mineral wall of Vale do Cabril, an archaic ravine with mixed strata of different shades of gray. I was curious to go back there, because I suspect that the anatomy of these stones is present in my most recent drawings, not only in those I made after being there the first time, but also in the older ones. Representing something before even knowing it, seems like an absurd idea, like a paradox that comes from the future and not a memory of the past, as it should be. This has happened to me, drawing the landscape, thinking I'm doing something simple and linear and then something else comes out, with a hint of mystery, but after all, it could just be a big coincidence. Hypothetically, I could think that it was my imagination that created such a place, or that it only materialized the moment I entered there for the first time.

I was already suspecting that the drawings were not pure invention, that the lines were composed on the sheet with a touch of arcane realism, some of them escaping the freedom I give my hand, represented more than simple luck. For me, the chance of having discovered these rock formations after the drawings is inexplicable, which raises serious doubts about the unfolding of the creative process. I don't remember being in that place before this summer, but if it actually happened, it's a mystery that everything has been erased from memory except for those rock formations. Perhaps returning to the place, I will remember something more.

I've been working on the landscape theme for some time now, it's the result of being closer to nature during my stays here, in this backlands in the middle of the mountains, a solitary adventure that brought new habits, typical of those who don't need to run after time. The inspiration comes mainly from my freedom to walk around, which feels more real and more tangible than anything else I do. Observing nature has not always been one of my priorities, only to the extent that it is part of the habits of any hurried creature, with no time for the banalities of the natural world, but life changes and now I feel that the situation is different. There is nothing banal in nature, it is not difficult to conclude that it is more complex than anything the human race has done to date. Agging implies changes and adaptations, sensitivity is different, knowledge about the facts of life is different, interests change. Walking around the fields with a sketchbook making notes is a joy that I didn't have before. Observing and recording is a highlight that is part of the days, an immersive experience with an interesting expressive contour. There is now a fascination in every detail of the landscape that enters my mental archive, there is a desire in it, a desire to unwrap the surprise and feel the information being registered in an incredibly detailed way, the filigree spreading through the senses to become part of my legacy. The act of observing and recording the landscape calls an alter-ego that is there to wake on these occasions. When he takes control and makes decisions, things work, he does diligent work while the rest remains numb. Who is this alter-ego? Perhaps the oldest "me" that comes from the atavistic heritage of the many generations that preceded me, updated in its focus and attention, ready to use 21st century mannerisms. The alter-ego observes, records, recreates, reinvents and follows its own path. Without me realizing it, he prepares things so that when I sit down at the drawing board, without having the slightest idea of ​​what I'm going to do, a miracle of synthesis happens and makes the images more than just the outline of a memory, they have to do with the global archive of my existence and not just with each moment per se, they reveal themselves in the form of a broad abstraction that runs freely through space and time.

This house is not my permanent residence, I come here regularly to spend some time. I started doing it more often since the COVID crisis in 2019 and little by little this space became more and more connected to me, there is an appeal to my roots in it, a feeling of belonging that has been taking hold, making it a sanctuary, a home for my adult ideas. The enigma upon arrival is the feeling that happens when entering the property, the curtain rises and another chapter of my life begins, with a new look and another perspective in relation to what surrounds me. I imagine it's related to space and earth and everything else. With each return, the feeling is always the same, similar to what I feel when observing the celestial vault - someone very small in the middle of something very big. There were many hot summer nights I spent here, sitting on the terrace watching the night crowned with stars. On this elevated ground without any light pollution, one gets the sense of space vertigo, of eternity visible to the naked eye. On certain nights, having the possibility of seeing one of those giant moons rising is magnificent - How many more times will I watch something like this? - Even just counting the times that has happened, I feel very lucky, but that doesn't stop the limit of my time from becoming more noticeable and that in itself justifies me wanting to slow things down. Because I don't have all the time in the world, I want to take a long time to appreciate each of those round moons rising behind the mountains, with the slender spines of the trees in backlight.

Drawing has been very important to slow down, to heal myself from a chronic state of moving too fast. In this place I find a logic that my body understands. Being here results in a condition that is irrationally ingrained in the fibers of the body, in the bones and muscles, which communicates in a straight line with what is around me, which makes the experience of nature important, because it helps me to resolve my rush. More or less the same thing happens with painting, it's an experience that isolates me from the passage of time, delays the universal clock in the way it interferes with consciousness. To make the idea easier to understand, I can say that when I'm working on the paintings, I'm in selective hibernation, not completely, but enough to wake up that alter-ego that knows how to do the things I don't know, that deeply understands the place and makes me see details that I wouldn't otherwise see.

In 2019, I convinced myself that by spending more time here, I should start over with a new project, a new line of paintings focusing on this experience. At first I thought I was going to break new ground, invent new things, but after a while I discovered that after all I wasn't inventing anything, I was simply making use of a lexicon of signs, changing the order of things and sometimes distorting the memories, but this was my way of recreating the world, using the distortion of my point of view. I often started with a model and then deviated, entering into an autonomous process putting everything in check, with countless reformulations until I got lost in a maze of ideas. I also invented things out of nothing and then discovered that “nothing” doesn’t exist, that there is always something from which the gesture is born. At that point, I found it interesting to subvert the classic method of visual drawing, discovering and inventing were very close. The initial doubt was about the correct sequence of events, whether the experience of the sites and then the drawing, or the drawing as a premonition of something yet to happen. I suspect that my alter-ego takes me by the hand to bizarre places where time is a paradox that can run in any direction, conjectures that make sense when you know very little - which is the case - not being sure is a game with unlikely results, it certainly drives me forward, sometimes just to learn from my own mistakes.

In relation to these drawings that look like the cliffs of Cabril, if today I manage to reach the bottom of the valley, I will compare what is there with what I drew before, I will try to understand if there is something between one thing and another, that does not just have to do with observation but that may be related to some type of premonition revealed through the trace. The idea of ​​“dejá vu” occurs to me when I look at the finished work, but I cannot unlock the memories that explain its origin. Perhaps there is no singular origin in the representation of the landscape, after all the images are abstractions loaded with non-rational information, which is why it is difficult to complete the paintings, the tendency would be for them to evolve over time, as the result of countless work sessions in which the layers would overlap in loops, but what happens is unpredictable, they can either be finished suddenly, or they can resist my intention to resolve them, running into difficulties, making me return to an imperfect version, through gestures repeated in a constant return to an archaic form, which resists revealing itself, which is waiting for the magical moment to emerge from a special segment of time where things endure - How long have I been here trying to resolve the dilemma of this painting? - To move forward, I am forced to enter into a temporal paradox in which there is not exactly a regular succession of events - I have become accustomed to the creative process without chronological contingencies - in which nothing happens before or after, but everything at once, distended in the present, in a zone of oblivion in the center of which memories float, without any relation to the past or the future, without a line of continuity, everything summarized in a single instant that changes, depending on what you want to see, without relation to anxieties of the past or with expectations of what may or may not happen in the future.

There is an imaginary dimension that also enters the drawings and perhaps this is the part of the self-portrait, the part that brings together the invisible side with the visible side, where I am interested in speculating and not focusing on the obvious possibilities. The concept of an absolute time is not absurd, it would be a disaster for our aspirations in life, we would lose the anticipation and enjoyment of discovering small pleasures, we would lose the “mise en scene” of our real drama. We live in the certainty that ideas are born in our heads, that they belong to us but after all, no one knows where they come from, they may very well have already been tested in any other part of the universe, but we are happier if we think that everything is happening for the first time, ignoring how many times the same segment of time has already been repeated or how many advances and retreats have already occurred. Speculation is the twin sister of imagination, both are important, eventually they are the last freedom of the man bound by destiny. To quote a famous idea “What I see in nature is a magnificent structure that we can understand only very imperfectly, and that should strike anyone with a feeling of humility.” Drawing is learning, seeing deeper, waking up what is dorment. Drawing is the artifice of the unprecedented, the splendor of the visible and the non-visible. Everything that matters comes down to a fleeting moment in the palm of your hand, the spontaneous act that differentiates what is known from what is unknown, that merges reality with imagination. The possibilities that can occur in an infinite universe are not important, what matters are the possibilities that connect with our desires and feelings. With drawing, identity is written, life is given meaning, gesture is freed, ignoring the background noise caused by the civilizing machinery. To do it better, the creator is someone who works in the place of silence, where he lives his brief night as if it were an eternity, leaning over the work table, focused on the immaculate moment when the tip of the pencil scratches the paper.

Another thunder echoes across the mountains and brings me back to the same dark heavy day. A curtain of slanting rain falls on the northern slopes, it doesn't take long to get here. The best thing to do is postpone the idea of ​​going to Cabril.

On the way back home I meet a stray dog. He crosses the track a few meters from me. He stares with dull eyes, the tip of his snout makes a savage grimace, with canines salivating, ears falling back, the muscles in his front quadrants tense. on its back there is a pimple of bristly hair - Now things could go wrong - but luck is on my side and after some hesitation, the animal retreats quickly and silently into the woods. Every now and then I encounter domestic animals that have gone wild and keep a cautious distance from humans. They are the result of the lack of people, of those who could welcome and feed them, now they only remember those who chase them away for hanging around the chickens.

When I return to this old house, I am always greeted by wild cats, my permanent companion, prowling around, stealthy and attentive. I like them like that, suspicious and haughty. Whenever I come back here I bring a bag of food to feed them and they got used to it, now they sense my arrival from miles away. Early in the morning, when I open the shutters to get the first rays of sunlight, the cats jump out of their hiding places and wait expectantly for me to place the food on the two aluminum plates that are on the patio. As soon as I cross the threshold, they whirl around me in a frenzy, without ever crossing the safety line that their instinct delimits in relation to the person who feeds them. One of the cats is completely wild, large and vigorous, with fight marks on its gnawed ears. One of those days when I got too close, I was hit by a nail that left a welt on my leg, an evil creature that doesn't even know how to meow, it just snorts. At night the cats disappear and wild boars come in search of food. Before I built the fence, the garden was visited every night, I heard them snoring just a few meters away and it irritated me to know that in the dark, they were digging trenches with those powerful snouts and ruining my months' work.

The sky is about to collapse. Days like this make me think about how much I miss the sun. I return home tired from the effort of anticipating the storm, disappointed at not having carried out the drawings in Vale do Cabril. Now the storm rages violently. The world outside is in turmoil, the wind scatters the rain in swirls. I sit for a few moments on the threshold of the studio looking south, where the storm is heading, I see the broken line of lightning in the distance. The lack of light, the sound of rain on the earth, the agitation of the plants, despite everything, are comforting signs that the world is still what we expect of it, but they are signs that also awaken the longing for light, the nostalgia for sunny days, knowing that behind those black clouds the sun still shines. Either way, sooner or later, the bad weather will pass. There is grandeur in this panorama, after the storm passes, the atmosphere is crystal clear and the sounds travel like echoes in the mountain, filling the air with their filigree.

I choose a CD and put on music because the weather reminds me how isolated I am here in this house that has been a refuge for three generations. The music attracts the cats, they shelter under the apple tree and stare at me.