Aritst and co-owner at Imaginarium: the Studio

 

As an artist, I try to paint that which cannot be expressed through words. My paintings are my personal and subjective view of the immediate present. My painting style is both expressionistic and impressionistic. One could say that I am expressing my impression of the present generation. I describe the present generation, creating paintings that describe contemporary people and their things. I am referencing old master’s paintings that also depicted the contemporary generation with their things. I source images from the place where the present generation live: the internet. While doing this, I address the concerns that the present generation has. We are intensely conflicted between reality and our virtual reality. We strive to live a good live that is beautiful and possible of generating envy. The way in which the present generation presents their lives online does exactly this. Painting this presentation is a way of making it real and maybe of asking if it is real.

 

As one of an identical twin, I enjoy an intense connection and interaction with my twin sister. Communication and fellowship between twins are fluid, unconscious, easy and mostly non-verbal. The two of us have, in social psychological terms, our own network (Borgatti 2011: 1169). We are also highly conscious of our individual identity. In every choice we make, we are constantly asserting what identifies each of us from the other. Because of this experience, I am fascinated by human connection and identity. 

Human interaction plays a major role in defining the individual (Callero 2009: 2) . The desire to connect with others has been and always will be a human need which defines how we are (Gilman 2009: 53). But the intensity of interpersonal relationships is less personal these days, even though everyone is connected virtually through facebook, twitter, instagram, etc (Callero 2009: 34). 

On these social networks, we self-consciously curate our identity. Identity is another form of non-verbal communication. How we go about identifying ourselves can either isolate us or make us belong. The choices we make in terms of how we eat, dress, and live are our identifying factors. The choices can therefore be seen as a work of art in itself. 

Recently, there has been a wave of returning to craftsmanship and what is real: in food, textiles, housing etc. Painting has, in the past, been seen as a way of capturing a person’s essence as opposed to photography’s sterile truth.Through painting, I hope to make a return to true connection with people and true identity. My paintings are all self-consciously aware of the viewer and convey my subjective experience (Nadaner 1998: 176). Because painting is “a way of saying what cannot be said in ways that cannot be described”, it is also a form of non-verbal communication (Nadaner 1998: 173). My aim is that my portrait paintings connect with the viewer and invite a sense of belonging, making him/her able to identify with the basic human need for connection.

 
http://www.stateoftheart-gallery.com/artists/145/alouette-ferreira