self-portrait, digital photography, 2009

I was born in the cold and small town of Soledade, state of Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil, in 1964. As I never had the chance to have painting lessons, I had to taught myself. The only course I attended was a figure drawing workshop at the Art Museum of Rio Grande do Sul.

I did few exhibitions so far. My paintings can be seen in a few galleries in Porto Alegre, Florianópolis, Salvador, etc.

I experimented with an abstract approach in the 1980's, but realism, sometimes tending to a pure "trompe-l'oeil", has always been something much more natural to me. Soon as I started studying painting I got interested in the super-realism of Ralph Goings, Chuck, Richard Estes, and others, for their cold and exact vision. That, together with the influence of Spanish 17th Century painters like Sanchez Cotán e Juan van der Hamen y Leon, led to start a long series of still lifes, which I'm still painting. But surrealism is my ultimate goal. Not the historical movement, but an attitude related to crossing the boundaries between reality and illusion.

untitled, oil on canvas, 24x30 cm, 1992

The illusion of three dimensional space on the flat surface of the support, which, I don't know why, is something that naturally appeals to everyone in our society, doesn't interest me as a way to show off any virtuosity as a painter, but as a way to express my perplexity before the physical world ("reality"). and the "fact" that physical things are magical and strange just because they exist (or maybe they don't...). And I think it has something to do with the "vital illusion" of Baudrillard, which I feel I lose with a concrete ("abstract") approach.