Dea Lopes
My art presented for my MA degree portrays the paths driven by the inner need to find my place, my garden, my centre.
My intuition has always guided my path and it is by following such a path that I arrived at the PFSTA. During my first year at the School, I learned to see, to begin to perceive what Reality is and connect this with myself. I began to pay more attention in the hopes of accessing this knowledge intentionally and consciously.
During my residency in Nepal studying Pahuba painting, I had the opportunity of experiencing Divine Compassion, the capacity of loving without the need to receive anything in exchange. We are graced everyday with the Beauties of the world around us and some are also blessed with perceiving this Beauty. The ability to Perceive brings us to being Present and awakens Senses and Reflection, which generate knowledge. My experience of Nepali culture, where everything achieved in life is ruled by the Divine, tremendously expanded my understanding of the world and awakened me fully to the present. The creative process of Pahuba painting is rooted, beginning, middle and end, in the Divine. A painting is considered to be the gestation of a human being and the artist is responsible for bringing this life on to the paper. Discovering the nature of each pigment’s behaviour under the brush made me think about my personal reactions to life’s everyday situations.
To complete my path, I returned to Brazil and explored my art from where I began and chose to draw inspiration from the patterns of Kadiwéus’ paintings, one of the 230 Brazilian indigenous tribes, as their drawings have had a deep impact on me.
Each one of these steps on my path and the processes described above have been incorporated into the paintings I have created for Part Two of my degree; each painting represents a part of my life.
The ability to see through a work of art can serve as a compass for the right path to be chosen in every person’s life. It is as if God had left bright footprints through Beauty for us as a path to follow. The intention of my work is that they be instruments of the Divine and leave these bright footprints for those in need, as others have left these footprints for me.