Pedro Abreu for "Islands.2021.REVIVAL"

“Art is a living being, when you do something that you like you are doing art.

When I paint I give my soul and my feelings to the canvas, that’s what art is for me, to put your soul in what you are creating.”

Pedro Abreu is an artist from Madeira, he lives in Ponta do Sol, a small town in the south of the island.

Pedro Abreu with his works at Art Center Caravel

He started painting in 1998 when he went to Lisbon to study at university, he wanted to study art but couldn’t do that for his family economic condition, so it was only his hobby.

In Lisbon he started visiting museums and art galleries and he got to know some artists seeing the way they worked.

Thanks to that he started considering art no more as just a hobby but as something he could do for a living.

Now he is a designer, and he does paintings too.

He is a partner of the Belas-Artes association in Lisbon since 2000.

He likes to use colours to draw, he told us he abuses them in a way, trying to take advantage of them to make everyone connect to the painting.

He uses strong colours to express landscape and portraits, because he thinks colours are the most fantastic way of expressing feelings.

When he paints he is influenced by the light of madeira, the colours that are here are particularly strong for him, considering the sun and nature lighted by it.

He brings the nature to his paintings, expressing it with its same colours.

Some of Pedro’s pictures of Madeira and its colours: yellow, orange, green, blue

He has a principle while he paints, to disconnect from everything, from his body and his soul, he is just painting not thinking about anything.

There is no strategic thinking, just feelings coming out, it is like meditation to disconnect from

everything and then to come back to your body.

When he starts painting, he usually doesn’t stop until he finishes the canvas.

There are some stages, in one day he makes the painting, then he leaves it and another day he redoes something.

When he finishes, he keeps the canvas in his living room for 1 or 2 days and looks at the painting and decides if to add or change something to improve it.

For Pedro It’s all about the colours, he uses yellow, orange, green, blue the colours of Madeira island.

You can see these colours In the nature of the island,he puts them in his paintings, like in the series of figures with different expression he made.

He took inspiration to create them from the expression he saw from other people.

The colours and the lines show the feelings of the people represented, without giving a clear identity to them. In fact, he thinks that the body is more than that,

he creates portraits of expressions which anyone can have.For example, he represented a man looking for something,

in another one someone is reflecting about life,

while one is a more pacific character, almost like a mask.

For the new revival exhibition, he thinks he will create something similar to his previous paintings putting the colours of madeira in some landscapes this time.

He will use larger canvas for that to have more space for expression.

By Steven Gheno