teresa martins - My work

My Work

My training and professional experience have always been in the communication field, but for many years now I had also been painting in different styles and materials. An unceasing desire to search for and discover new challenges made my artistic side evolve and create new ways of seeing, feeling and communicate.

With the usage of glass/acrylic as a basis for my painting came the worry to recycle this material, often found mixed with garbage, reusing it and giving it a new life and a new appearance.

The fluidity of stained glass paint, the shine and the transparency of glass and acrylic materials mean that each and every work have a life of their own and interact in its own peculiar way with the surrounding environment. Each painting is influenced and its final appearance modified by the place where it is exhibited and the reflexions that come from those elements. No doubt it is a demanding material, but also a very enriching one.

In 2015, I included once again canvas in my work, using the glitter of stained glass paint in harmony with other materials such as acrylic or collages. With canvas, I want to capture the essence of this medium, both the smooth surface of the canvas and its own structure for the construction of my works.

In the following year, I discover the tile and approache it with the same energy that has characterized my work with other media. To this element, I add alcohol paint and resin to create single tile works or tile panels.

I had already done seventeen individual exhibitions and participated in more than one hundred collective exhibitions, both in Portugal and abroad, having received more than a dozen prizes in Portugal and Brazil.

My work is represented in private collections in Portugal, Spain, Germany, Brazil, Argentina and the USA.

When art is a passion

Although I chose to learn how to paint on my own, and not academically, I’ve always kept a very close relationship with painting. This art form enabled me to better know myself and to express in a unique way feelings and emotions I wished to impart. This way the brush and the paint became the media to transmit my feelings, the tellers of my stories, the masters of fiction and illusion aligned with my dreams ambience and my perception of reality.

Painting is not only a way to exteriorize my inner «self», in which I release the positive and negative aspects of my life experience, it is also a demonstration, an awareness raising call against certain situations or events that take place all around our world.

I adapt my style and my technic to the message I want to transmit. The first brush strokes allow me to visualize what I want to create and I go on adapting my style and my technics to the work I’m executing, as my feelings unroll themselves. This way it can emerge as a naif painting or as an expressionist or abstract one... However, there’s always an objective on my mind: to produce something meaningful, at least for me. The diverse materials I sometimes use emphasize the theme and add to the plasticity of the whole work.

Therefore, Art is what fills my soul and keeps my need to communicate alive.