Nothing Is What It Seems to Be, chapter 30 from The Works

2019

Around 2019, I became fascinated by reflections.

Not by mirrors themselves,but by the uncertainty they create.

An object was no longer simply an object.A room became another room.The familiar dissolved into something that could no longer be trusted.Every reflection seemed to reveal another reality, while at the same time concealing it.

The first paintings from this period were titled Nothing Is What It Seems to Be.

I painted what appeared between the object and its reflection.

Not illusion.

Not reality.

But the fragile space where both briefly exist together.

As I continued working, the paintings gradually changed.

Figures appeared only to disappear again.Architecture dissolved into light.The boundaries between landscape, interior and memory became increasingly fluid.

Looking back, I realise that I was no longer trying to paint what I saw.

I was painting the act of seeing itself.

During these years my paintings also began travelling in a different way.

Writers and poets from different countries invited me to create images for their books and publications. My work appeared on international digital poetry platforms, where poems and paintings met readers in many different languages. It also found its way into poetry collections, including works by the Portuguese poet Maria do Sameiro Barroso and the Albanian-Italian poet Irma Kurti, whose collection Through the Eyes of a Child I illustrated. 

I loved this quiet dialogue between image and language.

A painting did not explain a poem.

Nor did a poem explain the painting.

They simply stood beside one another,creating a third space—a place where neither words nor images needed to be complete.

Perhaps that is why I have always been drawn to poetry.

Like painting,it leaves room for silence.

Looking back...

This period now feels like another threshold.

For many years I had searched for meaning through symbols, mythology and stories.

Now the stories themselves began to disappear.

A reflection.

A gesture.

A trace of light.

Sometimes that was enough.

Because not everything that is true needs to become visible.