Guardian angels

It is the paradigm of the new collection of Teresa Brazão in Funchal Athenaeum coffee shop, illustrating a great insight between past and present, present and future, containing religious figures listed in her thoughts. It is also the experience of dreams allies to her girl condition, to a desire for protection, as describes her daughter Cristina Brazão.

What led you to paint again, mounting an exhibition after almost twenty years?
Teresa Brazão: I'm just now doing a show, but that does not mean I had stopped painting, I paint often, only during life we have different stages and not always have mental availability to produce an adequate amount of paintings and sufficient that have to do with each other. There must be a common message. I took the opportunity now that my daughter decided to open this very beautiful space and whose dissemination strategy will be the "marriage" with cultural activities.

But what was the central theme that inspired all this?
TB: I did sixty years of age this year and we spent lifetime thinking about things that are not important, from a certain age have to see it otherwise. I lived the most active part of my existence and I wondered, what do I do now? And the people who were with us on this journey will they continue? Are they on our side? Or is it the fruit of my imagination? Is this type of discourse that I try to convey to people are more metaphysical motivations and that's what made me paint. It was clear that at this point I have a completely different essence. My parents died, I have raised four children and have six grandchildren, and it's time to think about things differently.

It is also because death is approaching that motivates this reflection? The idea of ​​the end, a stage that closes?
TB: Maybe, or maybe because we have reached a point in life where everything has to be relativized, it is as if we spent most of the time with little things no unimportant, what is important is above it all, are the affections, is love, the relationship between the people who are here and also those that are not.

There is a lot of island in your paint or not?
TB: We are islanders and we always have something in our painting of the island, because when we do it is always a part of us that is there. The fact that we live on an island that causes people to be constructed in a certain way, we are surrounded by water on all sides, is a limited space and causes people to develop in a certain parameter. I think we have something for sure that is: we think at some point we're lost in the middle of the Atlantic, while having some doors that allow us to leave, we overcome this limitation, by opening our minds to prevent geographical limitations, and we must perforce to overcome this.

The colors used are a palette warm and earth tones, has something to do with the island?
TB: Yes it has to do with it. The fact that all colors related to the color pink color earth has to do with the physical connection. These stories attributing the tone pink to girls and blue for boy's results from medieval concepts set aside defending boys were more related to major issues, the heavens and the earthly were part of women. I felt I had to do this as well, although there is a painting in shades of blue, because I am a woman and my femininity is just present in my work. Also my identity and relationship with the people around me is done that way.