Free Expression

Painting | Plastic Arts

To Helder Sanhudo

Susana Almeida
MSc MD

Impetus

Spectral sparks in slow, perennial fire
Of unlikely colors only seen and guessed
In minds and eyes of restless eagerness.
Tumultuous thoughts becomes hairline
Composite of pain and dream fused on canvas
Unique and capable extension containing the seething.
This unspeakable creativity based on secrecy
And in the experience of those who read with privilege
The rhythmic cadence of works made alive.

We want more and always.

Descriptive Memory

Helder Sanhudo / Casimiro Teixeira
January 2021

Modern art has always been guided by the constant creation of new interpretive avenues, where it has been shaping and redefining new, almost infinite paths, until reaching the point where it is not the real world that ends up altered by the perspective of the beholder, but of who builds, from whoever paints, edifies, shapes, the perspective of the daring creators of this new movement.

Until the 20th century, a large part of what was produced artistically was representative, until this ‘moment’ was reached, when other methods were detached from this almost hermetic structure, and the transition began to a route where colors and shapes suggested just a subject that is almost never represented realistically, but instead appears composed, transfigured, almost impossible to detect.

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The subject is, in effect, the most brutal interpretation that the artist can express without exploding in inert nullity.

It is truly the emotional end of Expressionism. Where, the artist resorts to ideas and emotions to express themselves, overcoming the common parameters of the forms defined.

In this particular case, the work is cleared from the chest from which it wants to leave, as if it were the volatile freedom of any troubled bird, of any blue bird that before, someone had arrested, for no apparent reason, then evicted him, until his deepest confluence, far from his own prison, now destroyed by the expression of his artistic fury.

And what is the artist fury after all? – Fury, what a word so potent, so harsh, so mobile. –

In spite of what is normally expected of an artist, is this really a furious action? An aggressive attitude? Could this new approach be a quasi-attack on everything?

Not necessarily…

The picture wants to come out of the constricted lines, desires liberation or the peace of the serene fields of color and expansion, wants to escape the burden of being trapped by the normal structure of what is pre-established and common.

Also, the object painted, the subject, wants to leave the terminating structure, he wants to live free, and he does it in the different colors of paint that compose him, in this canvas covered with a network that only expresses him, does not define him.

The artist is too hard, much to clever with himself, to open itself easy walks. He puts us all in our place and tells us only; this is me, now, and woe to anyone who wants to arrest me anywhere. I never had a past or a future, my existence is present and so I express it, free! – And isn’t freedom the greatest blessing?

The Wonder of the Senses

Quadriptics | Technique: Acrylic Paint and Vinyl Matt on canvas, Acrylic Paint, Vinyl Matt and Oil on canvas

Signs of Nature

Triptychs | Technique: Acrylic Paint and Vinyl Matt on canvas

Free Gardens

Diptychs | Technique: Acrylic Paint and Vinyl Matt on canvas

A Place in the Forest

Paintings | Technique: Acrylic Paint and Vinyl Matt on canvas

The Avalanche of the Gaze

Paintings | Techniques: Acrylic Paint and Vinyl Matt on canvas, Acrylic Paint on canvas, Acrylic Paint and Vinyl Matt on wood

Experiments

Paintings | Techniques: Acrylic Paint and Oil on wood, Acrylic Paint on paper

American Dream

Paintings | Techniques: Acrylic paint and Vynil Matt on canvas

“I’m not afraid of America” – Hélder Sanhudo

Blue Bird

Paintings | Techniques: Acrylic Paint and Oil Pastel on canvas, Oil Pastel on wood

The Valuable Existence

There’s a blue bird in my heart

In Liberty

Landscapes

Paintings | Technique: Oil pastel on wood