For one of its Sunday Readings, Mendes Wood DM shared an interview with Lucas Arruda by Nicolas Trembley, published by Numéro Magazine in August. Concerning Arruda’s work, Trembley explains that “Based in figuration, his luminous and almost obsessional series of landscape paintings come very close to abstraction with their painstakingly executed renderings of the effects of light”. In Trembley’s text, he comments that the paintings run the range from representation to abstraction and that they “are difficult to date and the places they represent hard to identify, but so much is our relationship to landscapes conditioned by our memories and by the history of art that they produce in us a strange impression of déjà-vu”.
During the interview, Arruda comments on how his getaways from the chaotic city of São Paulo to Barra do Una marked his relationship with observation. The times when he stayed in a small house in the middle of nature made him develop strong ties to the tropical forest and to the beach, both of which were united in the same place at the same time, as he explained. Concerning the moment he realized he wanted to be an artist, Arruda shares that he have always had trouble concentrating for long and that drawing was the only activity that allowed him to really do so:
“Over time it became a practice that brought me closer to myself, a way of organizing my thoughts, and as such it became indispensable (…). I really learned to dominate the tools of drawing so that I could express myself. It’s a very deep process that evolved towards painting, and I still feel it’s something urgent for me”.
When asked if he ever felt close to an art movement, Arruda said that he never belonged to one, but that he is a member of a generation of artists who are working in a socio-political context that is particular to Brazil, and he believes that his work is in part a result of that.
To read the complete interview, click here.
