FRANCISCO MENDES MOREIRA

“The works for this show started to take shape around repetitions and texture a nd also on a particular shade of white. There was this painting from last year that was happily brought on board early on because it had all these elements - ‘antipodes antics’ which of course, growing up in Portugal, always brings back New Zealand and its glorious landscapes and gazillions of sheep.

And for most of the time the works took shape basically around color and structure and, as they accumulated, ideas and thoughts started getting in them - also out of them.The white shade went from winter and snow to sheep, which then (applied to the repeating motifs) led to the idea of a flock, and then of course the shepherd - personally, sort of a dream job. Then a bunch of references kick in from Heidi to Fernando Pessoa’s “The keeper of sheep”, from “The boy who cried wolf” to counting sheep to sleep, and from that the idea of a shepherd who counts sheep to sleep and whose dreams are flocks of shapes and colors. Also other associations, singularities of country life, diy, hermits, daily routines in the mountains.

All this trying to avoid the idea of a shepherd heading out every morning to the mountains as a ‘plein air’ painter would, because then of course Van Gogh and the “Road to Tarascon” and Herberto Helder’s famous quote “I could go mad if I wished to”. Relatable if you’re a shepherd. Or a painter.

But yet here we are.”

-Francisco Mendes Moreira