Manuela Ferreira

Manuela Ferreira comes from a background where, during her Parisian childhood, the aesthetics of objects, places, and images held a central place. Very early on, she began drawing and painting at a preparatory school for Fine Arts. Through various encounters, she inscribed her work in a more personal research through drawing and etching, while continuing her pictorial practice of gouache and watercolor.

A new chapter opened for her after moving to the South of France, where color became the main focus of her work. For several years, she practiced silk painting, which revealed to her, through the delicacy of the almost infinite tones and the vivacity of the colors, the world of color. This universe now became the main theme of her work.

She subsequently returned to a more classical practice of painting: tempera (or distemper), with paper and MDF as supports.

She seeks to convey what the act of painting means to her. She chooses the landscape as a metaphor for the meditation that underlies her artistic activity; in other words, painting, for her, is practicing a meditation in which the landscape is the medium.

Each time, a mental landscape presents itself, composed of stereotypical elements: sea, mountain, lake, rocks, trees. These are simple, almost naive forms. Everything is imagined; nothing exists as such in nature. It is painting: "a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order" (Maurice Denis).

Color is paramount in this research. The elements that construct this "landscape" are devoid of shadows and light; they exist in themselves through the intensity of the colored material and through chromatic relationships.

The tempera (gouache) she uses is made exclusively from water, pigments, and egg yolk. This accentuates the freshness of the color while allowing a wide range of pictorial effects: from pure watercolor to "a fresco" painting, including the complete matte finish of gouache.

Small and medium formats are favored to capture the viewer's attention rather than overwhelm them. The meditation at play here doesn't want to impose itself but to accompany you with serenity and intensity.

"...The sea is one of Manuela Ferreira's sources of inspiration, as is anything to do with water: The blue lake, The blue river, A boat, A cove, The beach, The rocks... all these places exude the joy of living, which Baudelaire and then Matisse summed up in three words: luxury, calm and voluptuousness. Luxury of colors, impression of serenity and sensory pleasure of handling shapes to construct, each time, a new mental landscape.

I say build, because these watercolors and gouaches on paper are about architecture, as it resonates in perfect balance with nature. This, on the one hand, lends itself to meditation and, on the other, arouses an oceanic feeling of perfection. Nature is tamed, but for a good and gentle cause: visual delight.

The formats are modest: the aim is not to overwhelm the viewer, but rather to encourage them to take a closer look. These landscapes are obviously not intended to be realistic. They are stylized, treated by stacking colored areas that determine the spaces that the daylight of the southern sun unifies. The artist seeks simplicity, even naivety.

Manuela Ferreira places particular importance on the setting she imagines for each landscape or motif. It is not a question of reproducing reality but of reshaping its scenic space. Thus, one thinks of a frame within a frame, of a distancing from reality, of the theater, its sets and its staging, here silent and devoid of human presence. This undoubtedly explains the serenity conducive to meditation, to poetry. Each small painting puts painting itself into an abyss.

BTN (Bernard Tenon Nouailles) in – April-May 2024