Painting

I have always loved to draw and paint. Yet when I was growing up in Africa, I wanted to be an acrobat, run away with the circus, see the world. Sometimes we get what we ask for. I have done a lot of seeing the world, except it was neither with a circus nor hanging on a rope, but with brushes, canvas, paints and paper.

I painted people and their relationships, public and private. Later I painted what people left behind, and then the places and rooms they lived in. I liked to paint the uncomfortable things, even trespassing into the forbidden. But I also liked to paint the sun lighting up fabric or spilling over fields like a thick golden miracle. In Portugal I painted various versions of the wild exuberance of Guincho beach.

Then two years ago, like that empty sound in a sea shell, all recognizable images disappeared from my work. There followed a silence which turned into memory rivers running onto the canvas and papers. Fluid shapes that reminded me of the rivers in Mozambique, with the muddy waters during the rainy season, the smooth treacherous green streams hiding the infinitely patient crocodiles, the happy Limpopo waters with the hippopotamus bathing, the huge sea like rivers curving languorously, and the rivers like thick ropes shocked with the shattering cries of birds.

I don't know what comes next, but like a long distance runner I am hoarding my strength for the next vision that pulls me forward.