Francisco Ferreira
Fernando Jorge
Francisco Laranjo
Artist
His work reveals itself through an established grammar, translating the moment with flowing and limpid gestures, in a chromatic accumulation of tenses. His art career has spanned several decades, essentially dedicated to painting, but also venturing into other fields, such as the stained glass windows in the São Martinho de Cedofeita church, in Oporto, and the Sagrada Família church in Chaves, not to mention the ceramic panel at the Portuguese Institute of Oncology, in Oporto. He also has a fine record as a lecturer, having been director of the Fine Arts Faculty at the University of Oporto.
How would you describe your work in terms of style and subject?
My work seeks to respond, in a lucid and totally emotional way, to the essential questions of the world as I see it. With the presence of the hand, which I compliment through restraint of gesture and a palette in which austerity and meditative silence are naturally exposed. I would like the whole story to be present in every moment, which is what is unknown and at the same time, what is intended to be achieved.
Do you work in series, according to a subject, or do you wait until afterward to look for a title to cover the works that you produced in a certain period?
Normally I organise my work as answers to specific subjects that occupy my thinking, or to invitations and on the basis of a space, or to subjects that stimulated me to embark on some quest. The titles are just names, where it is necessary to assign identification to someone, to a place or entity. It makes things easier: the public appreciates it and the artist is better organised.
Are you a methodical artist in your work habits or do you follow a more instinctive approach?
I do not consider myself a methodical artist, although I go to the studio every day and have to fulfil different tasks and requirements depending on the different galleries, commissioners or owners of the work, if you can talk like this about those who do the commissions, be they exhibitions, public art, illustration, conferences, etc.
As a lecturer, what changes have you noticed in students between the beginnings of your career and today?
I believe that today a student has to be much more prepared in a multidisciplinary context, while retaining a serious and very scrupulous awareness about the nature of the answers, as an artist, that will be demanded of them. Their universe is of much greater media and critical exposure, even without their formal exercise, and as such more complex. And the judgment is more complex.
What legacy did you want to leave as director of the Fine Arts Faculty at the University of Oporto?
A legacy of resistance for freedom of creation and thought, which is more illusion than reality, because students do not always have the courage to oppose their professors and to discuss principles, methods and strategies. Manipulative temptation is great. On the other hand, I tried to value the history of the Oporto School and of the foundation disciplines, not forgetting all the other languages of which the Portuguese can be proud without complexes, because the quality of artistic creation is, without false modesty, of great quality.
«My work seeks to respond, in a lucid and totally emotional way, to the essential questions of the world as I see it»
