António Oliveira Tavares
António Oliveira Tavares, or just António to his friends, is a visual artist, painter of multiple shapes and colors, who applied for an artistic residency in our space, which, as a friend, he had known for a long time. He just felt the need to be outside his usual work studio, on the outskirts of Estremoz, in Alentejo.
In this place, he looked for a new context, with different stimuli of light and shapes, the inspiration, the will, the joy of creation. It was magical to share his intimacy as an artist, to witness and follow his gestures, decisions and doubts, the looks, at the same time over the
canvas and to infinity, in those moments of introspection that artists who simultaneously search around and within themselves have.
A unique and unforgettable experience, with rare moments of complicity, enjoying the enormous pleasure of seeing shapes and colors emerge, in both fast and slow movements, with new shapes and new colours appearing, disappearing and reappearing, according to feelings, sensations and states of mind – sometimes with the brush, sometimes with his own hand, in a gesture sometimes quick, sometimes slow and delicate.
The exercises took place sometimes on a canvas of restricted and formatted size, on an easel placed outdoors, in an allusion to the romanticism of naturalist painters but with a contemporary perspective, and sometimes on a canvas with a narrow and elongated shape, painting on the ground, challenging the physical limits of the body and space, with uncomfortable but desired movements, in bursts of conviction and pleasure.
