Cecilia Ferreira's Online Portfolio

“One has to say yes to humanity just as it is”-Otto Dix

My art has always begun with people. I see people as characters; all people are noticeable to me. Everybody plays a role: his or her identity demands it. I choose to observe people quietly as if I am the audience and they are all on stage. The less attention on me, the more I can openly stare at humans and take in all the aspects about their persona to create subjective portraits in my mind.

People do not always realize how much they reveal by simply sitting, walking or talking in a specific way. Body Language is more noisy than one thinks. I like to portray figures in certain manners to depict truths about people; about the human condition.

I use the figure in almost all of my works. Conventional beauty is unnoticeable to me and I search for beauty in boldness, distortion or comical features. Reality and my imagination feed off one another constantly and therefore I find my inspiration in life and then process it in my mind to create the images I do. My subjective feeling toward reality distorts it to such an extent that it feels un real, whereas my imagination is based on so many borrowed visuals from reality, it seems real

My subject matter are found within the urban sphere. I find my inspiration in coffee-shops, restaurants and streets. The pictures are then created within my mind and placed on canvas or paper. I like to depict humans in a social sphere, because it is there, through their interaction (or non-interaction) that their persona are revealed.

I’d like to think of myself as an expressionist, like the German expressionist I use bold line and colors and I believe that art should not only depict the seen world but should also convey my emotional reactions towards it. I believe I can make my own, subjective statements about humanity by the exaggeration of form and colour and by depicting figures in an honest manner. By ‘honest ’I do not mean depicting them physically correct or by portraying them realistically, but by revealing things about them they do not like to show.

I work in an expressive style, subordinating realism to expression. I use bold, vigorous brushwork. I abandon naturalism in favor of distortion and exaggerations of shape.