MEET THE ARTIST: Renato Fialho
Tell us how your career as an artist began.
My artistic career started in high school when other classmates and I started organizing group exhibitions to showcase our work. I gained a taste for painting in the classes I took in the art workshop chair. And I ended up creating a regular painting routine at home. It helped me to reflect on how I saw things at the time and it also served as an outlet for my personal and family situation. As time went by, I began to participate in competitions and exhibitions in search of recognition for my work.
How would you describe your artistic approach?
I can describe my artistic approach as an instrument of mental and sentimental occupation, a way of expressing what I see in the world around me and its elements as fragments of a larger and grander composition. People and objects mixed entropically. I have in me a sensitivity of my own to stubbornly observe the space that surrounds me. It's something I can't control and so I have the need to express it in some way. I found it in the painting...
How does your creative process work? What do you try to express in your works?
The creative process involves recording people, objects and places through photography, books, magazines, basically everything that captivates my visual identification with life. Then, this collection undergoes a graphic treatment. After having the linear base of what I visualize expressed in digital support, I move on to the next phase where I prepare a canvas: I start by painting a background of the canvas in a free and almost “rough” way and then transpose the graphically prepared linear base. I can thus unify two aesthetic components in a harmonious way.
How do you face creative challenges in your work and how do you keep your motivation?
The challenges for me in my artistic work are faced in the same way as any other day-to-day challenge. In a thoughtful, careful and true way. And the motivation that keeps me going is the continued feeling that has accompanied me in my artistic life. The pleasure of alienation from the conscience of limits and reason. In fact, painting motivates me to live intensely and living motivates me to paint.
What are the artists that inspire you?
Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dalí, Jean-Michel Basquiat Monet, Miro Francis Bacon among others, but the real answer is Everything and everyone inspires me!
Do you have a recent project or work that you would like to share?
I have some experiences of painting with collages that I haven't revealed publicly yet.
Do you have any advice you would like to share with young people who are taking their first steps in the world of the arts?
I would say to take the art world with respect for its importance as a personal expression. Openness, love, persistence and dedication are important for your development and notoriety. But above all, art has to give you pleasure.
Finally, which artist do you dream of working with one day?
Unfortunately, those who dreamed of working with him have already died. But alive would be Jeremy Geddes.
