For seven years I worked in a hospital as a clinical psychologist and coordinator of an arts project that I idealized based on the work of Dr. Nise da Silveira and educator Maria Amélia Pereira. After that period, I enrolled, not by chance, in a drawing course.
The drawing took me to a new perception of the world. I started to see the shades of a shadow, the relationships between forms and colors, as well as the beauty and the mystery of things under light and shadow. This delighted me. Drawing became a way of expressing what I saw and felt.
Two years later, I went to pursue my master’s degree at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, where I joined the Art Therapy department. On that occasion, I was able to visit the museum attached to the School and to attend some painting and drawing classes. These possibilities represented a unique experience for the maturing of my regard.
In 2012 I held my first solo exhibition, and since 2014 I have devoted myself exclusively to the work in the studio. I work directly from nature and the things around my studio, focusing my interest in the outgrowths of the line and color. For me, everything is movement, rhythm and color.
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And my grandmother sang and sewed. Sang
songs of sea and grove, in old-time language.
And I always believed there was music in her fingers
and words of love on my clothes written.
Cecilia Meirelles
The verses above from Cecilia Meireles’s poem Desenho [Drawing] defines what I feel when I see someone sewing or embroidering.
I began my career as an artist painting and drawing, but only a few years later I discovered embroidery when I visited an art therapy project, where women gathered round to embroider and share their stories. It was then, when I came across a basted thread on a fabric, that I intuited the expressive potencial of this language.
In 2014, I brought threads, fabrics and my grandmother’s sewing box to the studio and began exploring this universe.