One and a half day together with three other friends in Rainha do Mar. I take my board and my guaches. It is winter, rainy, and the beach is almost completely empty. The scenery is quite inspirative. The motif, in the end, is not a landscape, or a portrait, as it could be; it is the front of his house, a simple and cozy one. It’s getting dark and I start drawing, it starts raining and gets dark; I postpone the project to the next day. It’s always a difficult question to be answered by the painters: How long did it take to draw, or to paint? We always have an idea, but not precisely; quite often we get lost in time. This one took about 30 minutes to draw, or less, and other 30 minutes to paint, or more. I started painting outside, at the same place where I drew it; however my friends started wondering why I was painting there if they were not real colours…They found out what I fancy doing…Fauvism. And the colours explode from the board into reality. The always red or orange stem of the trees. Shall the sky be blue? Or would it be more beautiful with green? The action of painting is free, and and the blank spaces are allowed, inspired by Dufy - and maybe Vlaminck as well -, who allows himself to leave spaces on the board without painting; later, some other girl friend of mine says to me: - Look, I’m giving you a clue, next time you should not leave blank spaces, it will be more beautiful. I agree and disagree with her. It could maybe be more beautiful, but the painting is free, it must be free, it must be expressive and momentaneous, catch the energy of the moment, and the experience of the painter. However, I think I listened to her opinion, and the next painting, which was Le trois montagnes, I did not leave any blank spaces, the sky is green and there is a tree with its stem, but ‘wrongly’ I painted it with blue and brown (by the way, brown is not even one of the six pure colours). The sky was not remade, I left as it was, nevertheless the green grass, which I started painting by it, was remade at the end, ‘improved’. There are blank spaces all over the painting. If I work more with the coma movement of the brush, and give the ideal, strong and decided movement to the painting, the blank spaces will be eliminated more naturally; but I cannot deny that I like the blank spaces, and although they seem not to impress the viewers, they impress me; therefore, they are allowed. The hosepipe on the grass does not look like one, but who cares; it helps with the balance anyway, so it has its meaning to be there; besides the balance, it was there in reality. There is a perspective problem, on the side of the house, just up the hosepipe; the not very precise drawing, and the bad quality of the material (guache and cheap brush), were both the cause of that imprecision. I like my painting, the colours, the blank spaces and the smell of it. I gave it to my grandma, as two days before making it I said to her: - There are just three people who I would give my paintings, you and my parents. I said that sentence to Fernanda too, and she spoke out: - And me? she said. Two days later, I painted Le trois montagnes to her. My grandma got really happy. Some day, in an art book, I read a saying of a painter that said something like: “If I can touch at least one person with my painting, then I can consider myself a painter.”
p.s. the decision of writing in English, was because of the boy Freddy. One of the only readers, who got too curious last time, or not. Englsih & Portuguese! Spanish & French, do you miss me?
